Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for standing in for the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who was not available, and for giving us a very thorough response to the report. I am really happy to hear that he and his colleagues across Government consider it a living document. I firmly believe that it has to be a living document and that it will become more relevant as we continue to try to overcome this enormous challenge. There were very positive comments around the national investment framework for transport in Ireland sustainability policy, Connecting Ireland and the electric buses that were announced during the week. I am glad to say that the first 20 buses are going to my home city of Limerick and I believe 100 are going to Dublin. Athlone will be ahead of both Limerick and Dublin. It will be the first the town to get the electric buses. The new carriages that are on order are extremely important, particularly with the reduction in public transport fares, which is very positive. We are seeing that this measure is putting pressure on the system. Now that fares are more affordable, more people are using public transport services and trains so we need more of them. We need to invest in that system very significantly.

I will respond to the other speakers, beginning with Deputy McNamara. I was very happy to hear him say that we should go further than 51% in transport if we can. I think we should do so. He is absolutely correct to say we should not treat all sectors equally.

Deputy O'Rourke is the only member of the committee who is with me in the Chamber at present. When we approached this, we did not know what the sectoral emissions targets were going to be. We have a better sense of that since the provisional climate action plan was published in October of last year. The exercise we undertook was to take the 51% and apply it in one particular sector, transport, to begin with. We did not do a numerical analysis. We did a qualitative analysis of what can be done to reduce emissions. It may be the case that we can actually go way beyond 51%.

Deputy McNamara is correct when he says we are a farming nation and a food-producing nation. It is inevitable that agriculture will not have the same target as the other sectors. As the Deputy knows, County Clare will play a huge role in the offshore renewable sector in the coming decades. That will probably do most of the heavy lifting for Ireland.

I am not speaking as Chairman of the committee but certainly as a Limerick Deputy in the context of the Ballybrophy line, about which the Deputy made some very strong comments. There is actual investment happening in that at the moment, which we are very glad to see. The campaign groups have been very vocal about that and they have been pushing us. I think we are going to see that line saved alongside Nenagh, Cloughjordan, Ballybrophy, Castleconnell, Birdhill and Lisnagry. We will probably see a new station at Lisnagry with the development of the Limerick-Shannon metropolitan area transport strategy. This is all very positive.

I will turn to Deputy Whitmore's comments. The Deputy is a very valued member of our committee who works very hard and pushes us, certainly. She outlined a number of deficiencies in the public transport system in County Wicklow. I do not know Wicklow as well as Deputy Whitmore does, of course. I believe the issues they have there are very real.

That brings me to the kernel of my opening remarks, during which I addressed the issue of roads. Whatever about maintaining the roads we have, in this country we have this thing about pushing new road development all the time. If we are doing that, we should consider the capital expenditure involved in keeping that pipeline, which I call the fantasy pipeline as most of these roads will never be built. We are spending hundreds of millions of euros annually on that pipeline. Because we are spending that money, we are not spending it on the services that are required across rural Ireland particularly. Urban Ireland is certainly better served by public transport. I firmly believe we need to be looking at this seriously, as the Welsh did when they said, "No more roads". It did not make sense because they have a road network. The governments of the 2000s invested very heavily in the road network. Maybe there are still some gaps there; that is fair enough. We cannot keep building roads and expect that we will reduce emissions, however, and certainly not by 51% or anything higher than 51% if we continue to build all these new roads. We can do things differently and save a lot of money. We can move from Connecting Ireland.

The Minister of State mentioned Local Link. It really is an excellent service and it can be expanded and rolled out everywhere. It has proven its worth and the doubters have been proved wrong.

However, with Local Link we have to go from a service that provides transport to people who do not have cars to a service that provides transport for people who could afford cars. Unless we get even wealthy people out of cars, we will not hit anything like a 51% cut in emissions. We need to go from a Connecting Ireland type of programme, which is very positive, to every village, every hour. Certainly, if we address that lost expenditure in road building, we can do that and provide a meaningful, attractive and appealing service for people across rural Ireland.

I agree with my colleague on the committee, Deputy O'Rourke, regarding electric vehicles. The grant structure and putting everything in the electric vehicle basket, which was the policy of the previous Government, are a legacy of the thinking that we can tinker around the edges and do little things here and solve the challenges we have. The reality is that we can do a great deal more. We can be a lot more creative about how to solve the transport issue and I certainly agree that how we approach supports for electric vehicles should be examined. We should not be supporting wealthy people to buy electric vehicles when they will buy them anyway. We should not be giving them extensive grants. We should support people who cannot afford electric vehicles and who have no other choice. They are primarily in rural Ireland, where there are no public transport services. Dr. Caulfield appeared before the committee last year and he was particularly clear about this. He outlined the issue of forced car dependency and strongly encouraged us to direct support for electric vehicles towards those people who are in forced car dependency. I agree with him.

Deputy Matthews mentioned SUVs. The way the market has gone is absolutely crazy, with 55% of all new vehicles being SUVs. Many of them are electric SUVs. We have to move away from the big, heavy diesel and petrol guzzling car to the smaller and lighter electric vehicle, primarily, where electric vehicles are required. In the forthcoming budget, I would like to see the Government introduce supports to encourage people towards the smaller and lighter vehicle. As I said earlier, nearly 40% of our transport emissions are caused by car journeys in the zero to 8 km range. Many of those journeys can be done by walking, cycling and certainly with electric bicycles. Many of them can be done by smaller electric vehicles as well. There is no need for a big SUV or Range Rover for these short journeys. Many of the journeys are in urban areas or they begin outside urban areas and end up in the town or city centre.

I am almost out of time so I will make a final comment on rail, which was mentioned by Deputy Matthews. We have an incredible opportunity to turn the tide of investment in rail. The climate and environmental agenda will turn that tide. We can do it for both passengers and freight. In my home city of Limerick there are four under-utilised rail lines. We can link the upgrade and investment in these rail lines with transit oriented development. We can locate hundreds and thousands of new homes, which we desperately need, around new train stations. There is an ambitious plan in Limerick to do that. I believe we must advance that, expedite it and deliver it as quickly as possible.

I will conclude with that. I thank the Members for their contributions.

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