Ms Marie Donnelly:

I will address the issue of trains to Dublin and the geographic placement of our cities, urban centres and population centres. Many people in Cork may feel it is a big urban centre, so we do have these centres in Ireland. The Deputy is right, however, that we tend to operate a spoke system with our public transport. Earlier in the discussion, the question arose regarding why we are putting so much emphasis on bus rather than rail. Part of the reason is that buses can travel on our roads and we already have our road network in place, whereas we do not necessarily have the rail network in place for all the places we would like to have rail. That is a challenge and part of the NTA's plan is to reinforce rural connections, support people to get from the places they are in to the places they need to be in a more efficient way. It is rolling out a number of very interesting pathway projects in that regard, which will allow much greater flexibility than has been the case previously. We are starting to see the numbers increase as a consequence.

On capacity for EV charging, the Deputy is quite right; it is a matter of the number and speeds of the chargers. That will ultimately link back to our electricity supply and grid. From there, it is only half a step to the issues around whether we can roll out the generation and grid infrastructure that are necessary to make that power available fast enough, given some of the delays we currently have. I go back to the point about planning that I made in terms of transport infrastructure.

On the ports, the Deputy asked a more question on freight transport. Freight transport in Ireland is a particular challenge and the Climate Change Advisory Council is commissioning some research on it. We are looking at the whole question of consolidation centres and operational and digital efficiency of the transport system. We have a situation with small- and medium-sized freight transport - it applies to containers to a lesser extent - where a van that is half full may be going from here to the city centre, another one is coming in another way and they all converge in the centre of the city. Should we be looking at consolidation centres to minimise the number of smaller freight transport journeys into our cities? This would benefit the transport system, which is congested in our cities.

Digital efficiency is another area.

We can make use of so many apps that are coming out now. We all know what it is like to buy online. The goods are delivered the next day and the delivery driver comes from wherever it is with one parcel to the locality. Surely there could be greater coherence across the mechanisms of delivery in order that there would not have to be individual trucks with individual deliveries of individual parcels. That is one of the areas we are looking at on the council as part of the research we are undertaking.