Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will share time with Deputy Boyd Barrett.

At the United Nations climate change conference in Marrakesh in November, public transport was pinpointed as a key important issue for governments to focus on in the fight against climate change. A target was adopted to double the market share of public transport by 2025. How fares Ireland with this target? The State subsidy for the key public transport organisation in the capital city, Dublin Bus, stands at 27% of the company's income.

This is less than half what it is in Amsterdam and half what it is in Madrid. At Iarnród Éireann, State funding has been halved in recent years, the company is threatened with insolvency and threats have been made to cut all services bar the DART and services from Dublin to some key cities such as Cork and Limerick. The State refuses to invest the €600 million which the latest report states is now needed. If the Government was seriously concerned about making a real contribution to the fight against climate change it would massively increase the State subvention to Bus Éireann, Iarnród Éireann and Dublin Bus. It would oversee the slashing of fares in all these companies and would give commuters a real alternative, a real incentive to leave the car at home in the driveway. The Government's failure to do this is a sure sign that it is actually part of the problem and not part of the solution to this issue.

On 20 January 2017 the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America will take place. This is the man who said only last month, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive." Trump plans to withdraw the US from the Paris climate change agreement and to virtually dismantle the US Environmental Protection Agency. He has named Myron Ebell to head his environmental protection agency transition team, a man who concedes that there may be some global warming as a result of greenhouse gas pollution but argues that it could be beneficial. Trump's victory was cheered on by big coal, big oil and big gas. The mining equipment corporation, Caterpillar, saw its shares rise on US stock markets by 7% in one day after Trump's victory. It seems to be that the world's No. 1 capitalist politician is a climate change denier and it is becoming increasingly clear that key corporate interests at the very heart of the world of big business stand to gain from Trump's climate change denial policies and that they now have so much invested in pollution that they are effectively wedded to it. Many far-reaching conclusions can and will be drawn from that by millions of ordinary people, not least of which is the fact that, as we go further and further into the 21st century, the fight against climate change and the fight against capitalism will increasingly go hand in hand.

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