Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 13 July 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Reduction of Carbon Emissions of 51% by 2030: Discussion (Resumed)

Photo of Pauline O'ReillyPauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

If Dr. Daly needs to leave, that is no problem. She can respond in writing if she wishes. I wish to concentrate on the school transport issue. The last statistics I have showed that 30% of traffic in the morning, certainly in Galway, was school transport. I see from Dr. Daly's figures that 60% of primary school children are being driven to school. The rules relating to school transport, including that one must be 3.2 km from the local primary school or 4.8 km from the local post-primary school, are the reasons for that. Now, more than ever, parents are making choices about which schools they want their children to attend. Under the patronage system, 90% are Catholic schools, 5% are other religions and 5% are multi-denominational. Apart from that, schools get to make so many decisions on how they teach that parents are making more decisions in that context. I see that increasing, but we are not allowing children to take school transport to a school of their choice.

The part that is forgotten is that while one could say that somebody can cycle under 3.2 km, it is simply not safe for children to cycle. There could be another bus, but nobody really wants to put an eight-year-old on regular public transport. In addition, everybody needs to get to work afterwards. One could cycle 3 km to bring one's child to school, but where does one go to get to work? The whole thing is so complex that it becomes not a solution. Is Dr. Daly suggesting that we drop all those rules so that every child should be able to get onto a school bus? That is my first question. I realise we are discussing EVs, but if we could eliminate that 30%, we would go a long way to reaching our targets.

With regard to the EVs, there has been much talk in this session about car sharing. I looked into car sharing. In the end, it was not cost effective and we were going to have to change our lives to get to the closest place where one might pick up a car. It was not going to work for a family. Dr. Daly has addressed some of the models we might examine, but has she looked at what the buy-in is around that? Should we concentrate not on eliminating idle cars but on trying to make our cars more idle? It is putting our hands up and saying every family is going to have a car, but how do we get them to leave the car in the driveway? The focus on parking that Dr. Caulfield spoke about is critical to that. We need to have the two messages coming out of this. Let us have idle cars, but let us not have too many idle cars that we do not need. On that parking point-----

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