Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. Everyone on this committee realises the importance of this year's conference of parties. I thank the Minister for coming here today to provide us with an update. I would like to bring things home in terms of what we are doing here in Ireland. I, for one, want to commend the Minister's leadership so far in respect of the direction that this Government has taken since coming into office and our achievements to date. The obvious one is the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, in which this entire committee played an important role. We will provide unprecedented funding for active travel and we are starting the pre-legislative scrutiny of the circular economy Bill. Certainly, it is safe to say that more than any Government, we have really started to tackle the issue, but there is so much more to do. That is what I will focus my questions on today.

As I said, this committee has done fantastic sessions on agriculture and on how to decarbonise transport, but having been in Government for the length of time we have, we need to start seeing these actions on the ground. I will be brief because I realise the clock is running down faster than I thought it was.

In relation to transport, there is a carbon tax, which I believe will help us move to a more sustainable economy. However, in rural areas like the constituency I represent, Cork South-West, it is a bit of a harder sell. You can obviously see why, when the alternatives that we talk about, in public transport, in particular, are not there. In the fantastic body of work that the committee has done on public transport, the concept of having public transport available in every village and every hour was talked about. I would like to be able to go back to my constituents in those rural parts of west Cork and tell them we will roll out public transport for every village, community and area, every hour, in the near future. I would like an update on that.

I firmly believe we can see decarbonisation of transport taking place in our urban areas. There is talk of light rail for Cork city and Galway, like Dublin, but from a rural perspective we also need that concept rolled out. I am way over my time but I have more questions so I might come back with them later.