Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In places such as Heuston Station, buses already have priority. Turning to the Bill the Minister published yesterday, which I welcome, section 6 makes specific reference to cost-effective actions in the context of climate change. This comes back to the fundamental problem with the public sector expenditure code, which I had to spend a long time to get implemented by the Government. Would the Minister not agree that the fundamental problem here is that until now the NTA has chosen to buy buses based on the purchase price of the vehicle rather than its whole-of-life cost? As he said earlier, electric engines require much less maintenance than diesel ones. If we looked at the whole-of-life cost of buses, we would have an awful lot more electric buses in our fleet. The difficulty is this is being replicated throughout the Government.

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