Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials. I thank Deputy Matthews for allowing me to substitute for him today. I congratulate the Minister and the Department for all the work that has been done. I support the Minister's comments that the Government, more than any other in many decades, has ramped up investment in public transport rail and bus and active travel walking and cycling. We are starting to see the changes and I commend the Minister and his team on all of this work. We are starting to see a systemic shift in how we do mobility in this country.

I want to raise several points which I have raised previously with the Minister. I am sure he will appreciate the opportunity to speak about them. There is a challenge in introducing electric vehicles to our transport system. Good progress has been made. However, from a climate point of view unless we remove the fossil fuel vehicles as well we may not achieve our carbon emissions reduction targets in transport. I am mindful that with our increasing population these fossil fuel vehicles will not be scrapped but will continue to be driven around. Unless we have a policy to displace the fossil fuel vehicle fleet it will be difficult to meet the target.

The policy with respect to electric vehicles is to encourage them, for good reason, but not all electric vehicles are the same. The lighter and smaller vehicles are less carbon intensive than the larger and heavier ones. Even in a system where 80% of our electricity comes from renewables 20% of it will be still from fossil fuels. This is if we achieve the ambitious target that we have. We have to be mindful of the 20% of electricity which will be sourced from fossil fuels. It could be at least this figure into the 2030s. In this regard it makes sense to have policies towards incentivising smaller and lighter vehicles over and above larger and heavier ones. I am interested to hear the thoughts of the Minister on evolving policy to encourage the uptake of these.