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

I have a question for the witnesses from the Department of Transport but it also relates to climate action and environment. Regarding the urgency of changing our mode of transport, the Chairman was talking about Connecting Ireland and good public transport and mentioned the journey I took recently from Clonakilty to Kinsale for €8 return. There were students on that same bus who were getting the journey for €2, which is unbelievable value for money for an efficient service that is quite frequent. Unfortunately, that type of service is far too rare around Ireland. I know discussion and consultation about Connecting Ireland are ongoing but I firmly believe we need urgency here. We need to start rolling out these routes. Let it run concurrently with a discussion or public consultation process but we need to start rolling them out. We just discussed the carbon budgets. Even though the requirement in the first five-year period is not as large as the one in the second five-year period, we will still struggle to get there so I urge that we do that.

Similarly with car charging points, it was mentioned that a review is ongoing. It all seems to be reviews. We need to get local authorities rolling out these car charging points, particularly in rural area, be it destinations or just giving people an option. Again, this should be in parallel with this public consultation process because everything seems to be happening at a snail's pace. If there was a comment on that, that would be great.