Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree absolutely with Deputy Bruton. The delivery of our Bus Connects project is painfully slow. That speaks to a wider problem we have in our planning system, and a need to accelerate our delivery of infrastructure across a whole range of different areas. Bus Connects in Dublin - and I know it is being rolled out in various cities - had a very difficult birth, where there was a lot of controversy, and in my mind correctly. The original designs were all about providing corridors rather than building communities, maintaining as much lanes into the city as possible, and in the process of doing that, taking out front gardens, taking down trees and going through villages in a way that undermined the urban landscape and sense of community. That was a mistake. In fairness to the NTA, they revised through what was a difficult public consultation process, and they came back with better proposals. We are delivering the network review but now the Bus Connects corridors - that second part of it - is the one that is particularly slow.

I mentioned the planning system, because that is now a critical constraint. I will give an example. The first of the Bus Connects corridors which went into planning - and the majority of the remaining ones will all be within An Bord Pleanála in the coming weeks - was Clongriffin to Dublin city centre. This was a relatively straightforward project, and relatively uncontroversial, although these things are never completely uncontroversial. It went into An Bord Pleanála first. I think it was due for decision last October. That has now been put back to sometime this summer, and all the other projects are in an uncertain timeline, as are all the public transport projects.

I will have to be up front and honest. The ability of An Bord Pleanála to deliver decisions on our transport, housing, energy and other infrastructure is the greatest constraint facing the country. It is the biggest problem we have, in my mind, with regard to meeting our climate targets, delivering housing, water and other infrastructure we need for our future. That is why I am supportive of the Bill before the House which will try and streamline and improve our planning system to deliver it. That is probably the key constraint.

In the absence of the delivery of those, I will be looking, subject to the demand management study that is out for consultation at this moment in time, particularly at the case for road space reallocation, and using that as a mechanism to improve our demand management in transport. It may provide mechanisms. We also have legislation before the Seanad at the moment, which is due to conclude in the coming weeks, which will further support the use of experimental traffic management orders to deliver some of the elements of bus priority and cycling safety which we need to make the modal shift to meet climate targets and reduce congestion. It does not require us to wait for the entire planning system to deliver all the final projects. Yes, we will follow that course and we will obviously stick to the law and the planning approach. In the interim, while we are waiting for the planning system to deliver its verdict, we may have the capability, and should deliver a lot of improvements through what are experimental, short-term measures.

I am sorry for going into this at length, but it is an important issue and it is going to be an important political issue.

The 35 Pathfinder projects under our sustainable mobility task force leadership group, which is all about what we deliver in the next two and a half years to the end of 2025, will deliver in the likes of Dublin, Galway and Limerick city centres the ability to improve immediately the bus and cycling environment.

The mobility hubs are due to be funded by the Climate Action Fund. We have to tick all the boxes in the procurement process, but, while doing that, we can start to get the design details right and get ready for delivery very quickly. This is based on the example we saw in Finglas, where Dublin City Council used municipal land and put in a grid connection and charging infrastructure available to car-sharing and bike-sharing clubs. The model can be replicated right across the five cities, in particular. It is very suited to urban areas where one might not be able to install a charger at home. Also, it leads us towards where we need to go. We have to be careful that we do not replace overreliance on fossil fuels with overreliance on rare-earth metals and scarce copper, cobalt, aluminium and lithium.