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

I will give three examples to the Deputy. First, the most critical point is that we have to do much more on transport. We have to turn those figures around and to have more impact. The measures we have in place are working but the law tells us that we have to do more and it is correct. What might that mean? It is an emphasis on road space reallocation and making quick decisions around transport and traffic management to ensure our bus and active travel systems work. An example would be the Dublin city centre traffic management system which we are looking to put in this summer. This is where we can act fast, can put a left turn ban at the bottom of Westland Row, can introduce bus gates on Aston Quay and on Bachelors Walk and can reconfigure Gardner Street. I could go on. Those sort of measures, which do not cost a great deal, can be done quickly but that requires political courage by the council in this case, but also by ourselves in the Department in a supporting role. It is one of the things we need to do more of.

We need to go around to our other towns and cities to look for examples of that. Part of the whole purpose of the pathfinder projects was to show the ability to act fast and to deliver sustainable mobility, particularly via the local authorities. That is the real challenge.

I will give the Deputy an example of where it is not working. Some of the pathfinder projects which have not got through are in Kildare County Council and Naas town, where there was a very deliverable project taking through traffic out of the centre of Naas town. I will be honest and say the council was not progressing with it in a way to show that we could act fast.

That is the first policy intervention. In those circumstances, we can say we will take the money from Kildare and we will give it to the councils which are willing to do it. Limerick has done better than Cork, to be honest. I do not want to point to any one city but Cork came with pathfinder projects which did not include that level of ambition and, as a result, if one looks at the allocations to Cork, or Galway, which is probably something similar, it is not as high as it would be in counties which were more willing. The Dublin counties have been more willing and, therefore, they will get more of the funding. That is the first policy correction. That is to very much support speed and ambition in making the sustainable mobile switch.

Second, I would argue with regard to what is new, additional and what we really need to scale up, which is the promotion of rail freight. People will know I am in a fairly open discussion with Dublin Port. I disagree with its approach which seems to be the adding of another 2.5 million trucks each year onto a congested M 50, the ignoring of the climate impact of the Dublin expansion on the existing model, and the failure to really think strategically and long term about rail freight in that development at Dublin Port. I think we can change that and that we will. It is not just Dublin Port but we need marshalling yards in various parts of the country to make rail freight start to work. We started in Waterford Port purchasing new wagons, which I expect will do this year, to service rail freight.

We will go to Limerick-Shannon-Foynes next as we reopen the line there. We will also look at Rosslare with regard to developing the port there for rail freight and not just for offshore renewables.

There is a second example of correction or policy change, which is to stop the five or six decade shutting down of rail freight that has taken place, the pricing of it out of the market and the cutting of the backup facilities.

The third example I would argue, and this is something to which the members of this committee and the housing and local government committee will be key, is to change our planning system. Our biggest problem is that everything takes so long in planning. Most of our BusConnects projects have been in planning for about two years now. Even when one gets out of planning, one can then go into judicial review or into a legal process, which is very protracted and hugely expensive.

I can give an example of that. It is going on at the moment, so I have to be careful. The metro project opened for planning. I believe we should be able to get the metro planning this year. We have been thinking about it for 25 years.

Are there 12,000 pages of documentation with the application? It has been modelled to death. I do not see why we should not get a planning decision on that this year and, subject to judicial review, go to construction quicker than the 2035 timeline that was mentioned at the oral hearing. We can and should deliver faster than that. We are not serving our people if we set such long timelines. Our planning and legal systems are not serving our people. This is because it is a core part of the problem that everything takes so long to get through planning and through a legal process that is protracted and expensive, and not necessarily fair for everyone as a result. Those are three changes I would make, and that we are making.