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

We currently have 51 major national road and motorway projects either being built or in planning. We do not have a single public transport project at the same stage. We need to shift our transport spending radically towards supporting active travel and public transport. If we do not do that, we will see an ongoing sprawl developing further and further out around the country. It will be impossible to serve such a configuration in a low carbon fashion. If we are to be in a position to make those choices, we have to do an immediate reassessment, particularly of the transport plan. We should stop signing new contracts for new roads that we cannot then reverse. We should instead look to see how we can reconfigure transport spending. It is not enough for us just to state that we are going to switch from diesel and petrol cars to electric vehicles. We will just end up with the same gridlocked system and with people in longer and longer commutes. We will not be able to make the fundamental shift towards net zero with a roads-based system. That reassessment needs to be done straight away.

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