Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their interesting and worthwhile presentations. I have a few questions for them. It seems to me vehicle sharing is very low hanging fruit in some ways if we could get that going on a scale. Is there experience in other countries of how it has been scaled up rapidly? Are there support networks? I know it is in the main done through the private sector.

The other point which appeared to be slightly in dispute between the speakers, in particular Dr. Windisch and Dr. Sloman, is whether to price first or to wait until one has the solutions before introducing pricing on roads, congestion charges and carbon charges. Would the witnesses care to elaborate? Les gilets jaunes in France showed the risks of pricing first. Dr. Sloman said that without prices - an economist would understand this - assets will be insufficiently used and so one over-invests. I can see the arguments on both sides but I would welcome a comment from each of them on that because it will become a hot political issue. I heard Dr. Windisch reference in particular the importance of getting people on board. Where does that fit in to pricing and so on?

My next question is to Professor McKinnon. How far has industry come on board? Some companies have set net zero targets by 2050 as part of their corporate social responsibility, CSR. I understand that in the UK the Bank of England is taking a fairly aggressive approach to financial institutions looking at the risk profile of their investment. Presumably, it looks intensely at freight as one of the areas where one could have stranded assets and so on. How do we get leverage within the private sector without Government subsidies, taxes and so on which will create competitiveness problems?

I have one final question. I was involved in government when approval was secured for the national broadband plan. It was extraordinarily difficult to get that through the investment appraisal approach that Government takes because it takes no account of the potential increased usage of a new infrastructure. It tends to use a static model, taking the view that the same proportion of people will use it into the future as currently use it versus time saving on a road project which it is used to modelling. Is there a new approach to project appraisal, not just on the roads and national broadband plan, but generally, to take into account, as Dr. Windisch said, the new risk environment in which we are living, but also the new opportunities that are out there in a digitising world that make traditional project appraisal outmoded in that it often misses many of the real opportunities for transformation?