Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I look forward to Ms Donnelly coming back to us in the not-too-distant distant future to share with us how we are getting on. We need to take a lot of bold steps. We need to make a huge jump in how we all weigh up every single journey we take and whether there is a better way of doing it. Ideally, it would be a more sustainable way and also cheaper. If the train is much cheaper than the car, we will use the train, and if the train is much more expensive than the car, it will make sense for a lot of people to continue using their car. The more we can do on public transport fares and capacity, the better. It needs to be more of a carrot than a stick approach, although I accept that sticks are sometimes needed.

By and large, we need to incentivise people to shift. I think that if many people did shift, they would ask themselves why they did not do it years ago. You can get around a lot faster in most of the city of Dublin on a bike than in a car. Certainly within the canals, and probably within a 5 km or 6 km radius of the city centre, you will move around a lot faster and it is a lot drier than people might think. We have a lot to do to get people to even try that. If they tried it, they would quite like it, but many people are very reluctant to even try it. I might have been one of those people a long time ago but I have jumped, and if I can do it, anyone can do it.

I thank Ms Donnelly for all she is doing and wish her well. If there are barriers or things she feels she needs to bring to our attention, I encourage her to write to the committee, to me or to any of the members to say what she needs. The more attention the Climate Change Advisory Council brings to it, and the more people are talking about it, the more likely we are to get change that will benefit everybody. It is important that we realise there is much more benefit to this than anything to be scared of.

We will adjourn. The next meeting of the joint committee is a private meeting on MS Teams at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, 9 May.