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

In every area I look, I see a lack of commitment. With regard to transport, the metro is arriving 20 years late. We should have built it 20 years ago, as set out in the transport plan at that time. Instead, we just built the roads. We are not building the DART interconnector. Where is that as another significant and important transport project in this city? Where is the light rail project for Cork? I was in Cork at the weekend. We are talking about Cork having 500,000 people. There are no public transport projects of any scale ready to go in the city. The same applies in Waterford, Limerick and Galway. All our cities are grinding to a halt because of the lack of commitment.

With regard to renewable energy, we are making a submission tomorrow on where we should go. The Government states there should be no increase in renewables integration although we believe the figure could increase to 75% if we were serious.

The Minister asked me what pricing system I would have. First, I would move away from the emissions trading scheme, which is universally recognised as a brokering system in setting the price of carbon. I would include immediately in the current national capital plan a proper price, not €7 per tonne, for needed investments. It is nothing like the real cost of the pollution the carbon is causing and the damage to our reputation, which is declining by the day because we are climate laggards.

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