James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Tá fáilte roimh an Aire and his officials to the committee. I thank the Minister for his presentation and the work he is doing. I know there is an awful lot going on in the areas of mobility and sustainability. I compliment the active travel measures. It is welcome to see such focus put on that area, which has been neglected for an awfully long time. For the coming financial year, it will be important for the Minister and his Department to put pressure on the local authorities to spend the money available to them. That comes up quite a bit.

Another thing I find deeply frustrating is when there are projects that those of us who have served on local authorities know and that may be extremely expensive to undertake. There is sometimes a degree of fear on the part of local authorities in that they do not want to undertake projects of such large scale, such as long footpaths and pedestrian schemes. It might be nice for the Department to allow some Oireachtas representation on large-scale projects. We may want the Minister to report to the local authorities rather than it being vice versathe entire time, with local authorities reporting to the State agencies that have the responsibility to allocate that funding down. That would be very welcome.

As for the transition to greener modes of transport, we are in the midst of an enormous shift in vehicle patterns in respect of the types of fuel required to drive vehicles on Irish roads. Does the Minister think the Department, with this year's expenditure, is doing enough to realise and meet targets we have set down for the removal of diesel vehicles from Irish roads? Something I have a degree of concern about is that many families may be buying soft hybrid diesel vehicles, which have become quite normal, but where will they be in five and six years' time, when it comes to trading in and perhaps purchasing new cars? What will the knock-on ramifications be for the value of those vehicles? Will it still be legal into the 2030s to drive those vehicles on Irish roads, despite their being less than ten years old? Will the Minister give us some guidance on that?