Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----the extensive commentary about the Government's target for electric vehicles. Everybody in the House supports an aggressive programme to increase the use of such vehicles. Some of us have even voted for important moves to rebalance in favour of a more carbon-neutral future. The issue is not whether we should try to maximise electric vehicle use but whether there is any substance behind the very specific target that underpins the current climate plan.

There is no indication, for example, in the budget for next year or in the projections for the following two years, that the Department of Finance is expecting to end the purchase of internal combustion engine propelled cars in the next few years. Nobody believes the figure of 1 million cars by the end of the plan is either realistic or has any substance behind it. That is an overall problem with the Government's approach because the Taoiseach has admitted the country is a laggard. I recall that when the Taoiseach's predecessor, Deputy Enda Kenny, took up office in 2011, he, along with other Fine Gael Ministers, spent a numbers of years attacking the previous Government's climate change targets as being unrealistic and attempting to pull the then Government back from those targets. I recall Commissioner Hogan rubbishing a lot of what was going on at that stage with climate change policies. He did everything he possibly could at that time and in the run-up to that period to undermine the Green Party, for example. We have fallen behind over the past eight years and there has been little action on the climate change front. There is a dire need for some substance behind all the hype and high-flowing rhetoric. We need to see reality and concrete plans that can be brought to fruition. I was disappointed with other aspects of the budget. There were no imaginative ideas, bar the carbon tax, which was well-known and proposed by the Joint Committee on Climate Action. There was nothing else in agriculture and so on to try to move on quickly on the climate change agenda. Is a plan being prepared to try to reach the new goal of electric vehicles or is this another target he has no intention of fulfilling?

See this speech in context