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

On Monday the Environmental Protection Agency issued a warning that air quality in Dublin had breached health limits owing to traffic, causing asthma among children and heart and lung conditions among the people of the city. That is not a surprise. Delegates from all over the world came to the recent Velo-city conference and could not believe how shocking the traffic management system in the city centre was. On Monday the first part of the much heralded Cork sustainable transport system was shot down when Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil voted against a bus priority improvement measure on Wilton Road. The first part of what was supposedly the new Luas line in Cork is now dead in the water. We face gridlock costs of €2 billion a year under the Government's transport policies. The Government has 51 major national road and motorway projects on the go. They are being built or planned, but not a single public transport project is at the same phase.

The EPA stated in June that, with existing measures and measures included in the Government's national development plan, transport emissions were due to rise by 11% by 2030. We face fines of hundreds of millions of euro a year for the failure to cut them. On 13 June the House voted on a motion that was moved by the Social Democrats and amended by the Green Party which called on the Government to "revise the NDP to ensure the achievement of the interim 2030 emissions reductions target and subsequently a net zero emissions economy by 2050". The Taoiseach's party has been playing politics with it. The handbags between him and Deputy Micheál Martin last week concerned this issue. The Taoiseach said Fianna Fáil wanted to cut the roads programme. Disappointedly, Fianna Fáil replied by stating it had not voted in that way on 13 June and was just talking about overruns on the national children's hospital project, but it did vote in that way. The House approved the motion to revise the national development plan to start to make it climate-ready and to start making a change.

The Government's climate action plan has nothing to state on transport, other than promising to turn every diesel or petrol car into an electric vehicle. Every environmental expert of note says this is not good enough. It will not work and will leave us stuck with gridlock and the inefficient and unsustainable system that is killing the economy. as well as our society. The question is this. What will it take for Fine Gael to admit that its treasured and much promoted Project Ireland 2040 and national development plan are not fit for purpose? The Government cannot be taken seriously on climate change if it insists on sticking to every one of the road projects and not moving an inch to change the national development plan. It has to change. It has to go. The people of this city are choking. The people of Cork are now guaranteed gridlock for the next while because the Taoiseach's party will not support a public transport measure. What is going to change?

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