Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their extremely interesting presentations. It strikes me that it is about a huge shift. So much of the transport focus has often been on reducing journey times when in fact this is about reducing journeys and thinking in terms of emission miles. Whether the target be 6% or 20%, the committee needs to set targets down to the level of emission miles and not just in car ownership and so forth. I was struck by the importance of things that might not seem to be directly related to emissions such as having places that are nearby, be they post offices or public amenities. I was also struck by the idea of rural schools being part of our climate response. Shared school transport seems to be another low-hanging fruit and an example of where we could be doing things a lot better. Digitalisation, which was mentioned by everybody, is also interesting. I know that needs to be accompanied by physical infrastructure as well as upskilling because 50% of the population in Ireland are digitally disempowered in that they do not have basic digital skills.

I mention targeted measures around electric vehicles and bikes. Dr. Windisch and Professor McKinnon might look at this. Is there something around the last mile idea that we could be doing? When it comes to freight, I mention last mile delivery, empty vehicles and idling. We should use much smaller vehicles for the end stage of freight delivery. Are there examples of where that is working well?

I also want to ask Professor McKinnon about freight and the TEN-T reforms in respect of ports and rail. The individual rail journeys in Ireland are quite short and we have rail connections between Rosslare, Cork and Dublin, as well as Belfast from a shared island perspective. How can we look to be more ambitious about how we connect port and rail freight and make a bigger case in that regard, possibly even from the TEN-T European funding perspective? We must make sure that where freight is on roads, we keep it on motorways and that we do not have freight vehicles idling and using smaller motorways. That might require specific and targeted measures to keep freight on railways. We know we have a problem with freight going off-road onto smaller roads. Could we be using life cycle costing in procurement to really incentivise smaller vehicles for freight and shorter distances?

On the road user tax, in 2019 the committee heard that we are in fact subsidising car transport to the degree of €650 per person per year. We hear a lot about road tax but we are already subsidising car usage. We can make the decision at a political level to shift our investment. Rather than waiting for a road tax to then provide money that we then might invest in public transport, we can in fact make that shift by deciding to put in place ambitious ideas in terms of public transport. The idea of public transport for every village every hour is something that I know many across Ireland would love to see. Is the case that we might need to skip the State and not rely on consumer change to fund substantial change but to front-load investment in a radically different option? The witnesses' comments on these issues are welcome. There are some exciting new ideas in what the witnesses have said that I hope the committee will be able to push forward.