Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputies Niall Collins, Cathal Crowe and Cormac Devlin. I will take six minutes and each of the other Deputies will take three minutes. As is the case with other contributions, I will use my six minutes to pool a number of questions and the Minister may decide to answer in writing on another day so that we are not wasting speaking time in the House.

I welcome the Minister back to the House. Cocooning in the Wicklow hills did not do him any harm. I fear that when it comes to transport, tourism and sport, however, a lot of the Department may have been cocooning with him. The various sectors are at pains to point out that they are urgently awaiting sector-specific measures to assist them. We are discussing transport today, but we had an engagement on tourism and the hospitality sector last week. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Griffin, who was here on behalf of the Minister, briefed him on that debate. A week later nothing further has happened and we are no further on. There is a basic denial or, perhaps, a lack of understanding of the sorts of measures that the sector will require to get off the ground. If we do not take them, we will have up to 260,000 people on the dole. We are as well to have them working and that will require imaginative and sectoral support.

On the transport side, in his opening statement the Minister clearly indicated that he intends to support those agencies of the State that are in difficulty financially. Expressway, in particular, is on the path to insolvency, and that has serious implications for the directors of that company in terms of their fiduciary duties. I hope that the work the Minister, his Department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform are doing comes to a conclusion very quickly so that we can have the appropriate cash injection, not just for Expressway but also for other aspects of our public transport system which will need it to stand still, not to mention our ambitions for public transportation going forward.

In addition, private operators within the public transport system will require our support. Rural link and taxi drivers have been affected. We need an all-encompassing strategic plan to keep the network functioning and to facilitate the recovery in the post-Covid period once we are in a position to begin. I ask that those figures be announced as quickly as possible and that there is a strategic plan for the sector.

The Minister mentioned the safety of our public transport network. There have been a number of pedestrian deaths in the past couple of months, which is a cause for concern considering that there has been less traffic. There have been more deaths than during the same period last year and, sadly, nine pedestrians have lost their lives. I ask the Minister to raise that matter with the Road Safety Authority and determine what is needed, such as enforcement measures for gardaí to deal with people speeding in urban areas where there is no traffic.

The Minister referred to micro mobility. This is key, given that we have all been semi-conditioned to staying at and working from home. There must be an all-of-Government approach to the incentivisation of working from home, car pooling and walking and cycling where possible.

France has displayed particularly good ambition in announcing that it intends to establish 650 km of pop-up Covid cycleways. That is something we should do now in the larger cities, where cycling is a genuine option for those healthy, capable and willing enough to do so. That could help with congestion. Other cities around the world, such as Oakland, San Francisco and New York, have also introduced new powers, as has the UK, to make certain thoroughfares available only to cyclists, joggers or pedestrians. That is also something we should look at now we have the opportunity.

We must work hard on consumer sentiment and confidence to try to get people to re-engage with public transport. I refer to additional capacity. We had a serious problem with capacity before the current crisis and addressing that issue will involve engaging with the private sector to see if it can help in supplementing public transport capacity, particularly with buses. Regarding aviation, legislation will be required urgently. We heard about the form-filling debacles of last week, where some people in airports were filling out forms but others were not. Post Covid-19, in the period after the lifting of the lockdown, we will have to focus heavily on ensuring we have contact tracing and on knowing who is coming into the country and where they are going to be so we can prevent spikes happening again.

I was glad to hear the Minister saying how vital the aviation sector in general is to our recovery as an island nation with an outward-looking economy. We need a package, perhaps Europe-wide, to support aviation. We are lucky in Ireland with the relative health of the balance sheets of Aer Lingus and Ryanair. They will not last, however, unless we are in a position to assist them in some way.

I have two closing points before I hand over to my friends. Driver testing, particularly for learner drivers, has a backlog of approximately 20,000 building up. We need a plan to deal with that, because young people have been asked to deal with enough and sacrifice enough. They cannot be faced with losing their vehicles, having them seized or being prosecuted for driving. We need to be imaginative on that topic. I have also been asked to raise the issue of car tax. Many elderly people have been cocooning. Can they be refunded a portion of their car tax for the year? Can that be looked at?

The National Oil Reserves Agency, NORA, has approximately €300 million in its accounts. It needs €90 million. I know this is more a matter for the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, and his Department, but there is also a transport-related levy of 2c per litre of fuel. Given NORA has €300 million in its accounts but needs only €90 million, I suggest there needs to be urgent legislation to provide for it to make a one-off payment to the Exchequer of €210 million, because those much-needed resources could be put to work on some of these measures.

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