Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank the Minister for his opening statement. I invite members to indicate if they would like to ask the Minister questions. I might go first. I will pick up on two remarks from his statement. The first is that we have managed to decouple economic growth from emissions, which is very welcome. The other is that the Minister believes transport emissions have peaked and that they will decline from here on in. It is one thing to decouple emissions from economic growth but we are seeing a surge in population growth at the moment. We expect to see that right through to 2040 and beyond. Decoupling emissions from population growth is going to be a very great challenge, particularly in the transport sector. It is very much in line with the "avoid, shift, improve" philosophy in reducing emissions in transport that we avoid new emissions in the transport sector. We therefore need to think about where the new people who are going to live in this country are going to live.

It makes far more sense to me that we plan for them to live in such a way that they do not create a greater burden on transport emissions. There is a real opportunity - and we have spoken about this in the past - to develop our regional cities quickly, in particular through using rail if we build high-quality and high-density housing near new train stations. In places such as my own city of Limerick, there would be an opportunity to link Limerick and Shannon with high-frequency rail and to build stations along that railway together with housing, commercial and industrial development. That national strategic planning piece will be hugely important in ensuring we do not see an increase in transport emissions. Therefore, if we do have an extra 1 million people in the country by 2040, they should not be car dependent. They should be able to get to and from school, work and everywhere else they need to be primarily by metropolitan rail systems. I mentioned Limerick and the mid-west, but good work is being done in Cork already. There is an opportunity for Galway, and perhaps less so for Waterford. I would like to hear the Minister’s views on the potential for fast growth of the regional cities with metropolitan rail underpinning that growth in order to prevent increased emissions in transport in the years ahead.