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

We have set out a vision of what might be possible had we the budget and a sense of ambition. Our first priority should be providing rural public transport services. The Minister has stated that the Government cannot take up our suggestion of following the Swiss model, where villages of a certain size are guaranteed a public transport system. I will make two points in response. First, the Swiss manage to meet that commitment in certain cantons where the population density is low. Second, perhaps one of the reasons we have such a dispersed population and a dominant dependence on the car is that we do not have a public transport service. It is a chicken and egg situation.

I will give an example from Deputy Michael Collins's neck of the woods, which I know well. Let us start at its farthest reach in Barleycove or Crookhaven. There is a sweet spot in cycling distances that everyone who cycles knows works efficiently. It is 6 km, 7 km or 8 km. That is an effective bike journey. Let us cycle from Crookhaven or Barleycove to Goleen. Were it a Swiss village, Goleen would have a guaranteed 12 bus services per day under the Swiss canton system. Going from memory, the 237 route in Goleen has two bus services per day, which does not constitute a quality public transport service. If we provided 12 services and people connected to them from the surrounding area, the towns and villages at every stop from there to Skibbereen - Toormore, Schull, Ballydehob, Lisheen and onwards - would be transformed. I am told by friends in Schull that there is no one left living on its main street. Schull is a stunning town with a brilliant school. It is a great place to live. Are we going to let our towns and villages, with their lovely 19th century architecture, close down and die? We should do what places like Callan in the Minister of State's constituency are starting to do and revive our 19th century market villages and towns by having people live in their centres, retrofitting them, installing broadband and insulation. More than anything else, providing them with public transport that was centred around high-quality bus routes would turn rural Ireland around. People would then know that they would be able to get all the way to Skibbereen and Cork. The number of services would increase with ever greater frequency as someone travelled to each larger town. Doing that everywhere in every single county is the way to revive rural Ireland. It would allow people to raise families in those towns.

We must consider the economics for the taxpayer. Currently, we are following a sprawl model, where we keep going farther out. That means we must build more and more schools, hospitals, primary care centres and road-based public transport services even though there are already public transport services close to the town centres.

8 o’clock

If one lives in Schull, one can walk to school. There was even a small hospital which we could return to being a high quality primary care centre. If density in the town or village starts to increase, it will be successful. That can be done by starting to provide the services that are available in other European countries and that are based on public transport rather than everyone having to drive. One of the reasons to do it is that 25% of the people do not own a car, typically due to being older, less well off, disabled or for a variety of other reasons. Will we leave them behind as we continue the car dominated transport system? Do we have no sense of social justice in respect of transport?

A revolution is taking place, yet I have heard no one in the Chamber answer the fundamental question I am putting, namely, how we will close the 70% gap to meet our 2030 targets, not to mention the larger ambition that by 2050, this will be a net zero carbon economy? That is what the Committee on Climate Action agreed to last week and I am sure the Government will take it up. We cannot set it as a target and not do anything about it. We must make it make it real and think long term. We are going to electrify the transport system, but that should not mean that we just replace 2.5 million fossil fuel cars with 2.5 million electric cars. We must use our brains. We do not make cars and do not necessarily need to buy as many as possible. As we completely redesign the car transport system, could we not switch to a car sharing model? Most cars are parked 95% of the time. If we were to move to a car-sharing model, we would not have to pay tax. for insurance or maintenance, or to have so many car parking spaces. BusConnects would be easier to implement because we would not need as much space. Given that everyone knows the current model is not working, do we have to stick to it?

At the same time as we electrify the transport system, we should electrify the rail network. This is the country with the least electrified rail network by a country mile. I hate to say that because we always seem to be the worst, although we are not and this is a bloody good country. We need to electrify the rail system if we are to move to a zero carbon transport system and a zero carbon economy. While we are doing that, could we follow not just the Swiss but also the Dutch? Trains from Utrecht to Amsterdam depart every ten minutes and the journey times are nothing. People love being on the train. If we want to decarbonise the transport system, we need to electrify the rail line from Galway to Dublin, double the number of tracks and bring the journey times right down. Let us reduce the journey time from Galway to Dublin to one hour, one hour and a half or whatever is possible if there is ambition, rather than planning for roads, which is what we are doing. That is not impossible and if we were to do it, it would help to develop Galway more than all of the roads which, ultimately, lead to Dublin, resulting in it growing ahead of all other cities.

It should not just be a rail network to Galway. I agree that we should consider a light rail system for Galway and Cork, where the volume of traffic is increasing at a rate of 10% per annum, according to the latest figures. The Jack Lynch Tunnel, the Dunkettle roundabout and the South Ring Road suffer from the same problems as the M50. Our solution, however, is the same as in Dublin, namely, build more roads. That is what is happening, but it will never work. Will the Government wake up and realise that trying to tackle gridlock with more roads is a road to nowhere, a cul-de-sac, that will kill the country? We will be less efficient, less healthy and less happy and will never meet our climate targets because the road based system forces us to continue building outwards, letting the existing housing stock in those rural towns and cities fall to rack and ruin. Is it not possible to consider doing it a different way?

Last but not least, I return to my central point that active travel is one of the ways to make it happen. We must promote walking and cycling. The hierarchy of transport should start with walking and cycling, then bus and rail services and, finally, the car. We are the exact opposite, however, and have all of the statistics to prove it. Representatives of the Irish pedestrian network spoke in Buswells Hotel and said it was about simple measures such as having a flat pavement in order that an older person would not be fearful of tripping when walking on it, or providing enough time for pedestrians to cross the road in order that an older person would not be terrified that he or she might not get across, unlike the current system which creates spaces dominated by the car. "Carchitecture" was the word I heard today. It is not an attractive environment and does not make the country a beautiful place. It fills our lungs with air pollution and is killing the planet. The planet is on fire and we have to respond. There is such anger at Fine Gael in the environmental community because the party is all talk about wanting to do something about climate change and all of its members now claim to be interested in it. In dealing with the fundamental, most important, largest problem, with the fastest growing emissions, however, Fine Gael is going entirely in the wrong direction and does not seem to have the imagination, urgency or real intent to tackle climate change in a different way. If it did, it would turn around the Goleens, Tramores, Schulls and Skibbereens of this world. As for sense of place and how space is provided, let us consider and celebrate what is working. Urban space was created in Clonakilty, where a good town architect advised that the town should not be dominated by the car and it is thriving as a business place, a tourist venue and a place in which to live, with a strong community. That is what will happen if we move away from the car dominated system which Fine Gael is encouraging and move towards a people-centred, environmentally conscious, walking and cycling world with efficient public transport. That is what we need.

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