Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I am absolutely delighted the economy is recovering, I am just sorry that the statistics show it is disproportionately loaded in favour of those at the top. Those in the middle and the bottom have seen their incomes falling. On the issue of public transport, in which radical investment is needed, metro north was on track when the Government came to power and then it shelved it. While it has now put the project back into development, we have not seen anything on the ground. I see that the Minister chose to ignore the points I made about electric cars, which comprise a key plank of his policy to lower our emissions. It is not me giving out and saying that it is not good enough. The Government's own agency, the EPA, is pointing out that there will be an overall growth in emissions because of our lack of investment in public transport. The Government announced to great fanfare the discovery of billions of extra euro in the Exchequer coffers. When will we see evidence of that to which I refer being front-loaded in terms of delivery. Given that he places such emphasis on them, the Minister might talk about electric cars. How is he going to get the numbers from 1,000 to 50,000? When the Government came to office, the target was 230,000. As such, we are going forwards and going backwards.

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