Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Pringle, for his work and the work of the staff in his office. He is putting the spotlight on transport and asking us to look at it in a new way as an essential part of the solution to climate change. I welcome that the Government is not opposing the motion. The question, however, is what the Government will do as a result of it. Of course, we have asked that repeatedly. It is not reassuring that there is no Minister, either junior or senior, with responsibility for transport here. Such a presence would be helpful.

We are having this debate in the context of a climate emergency that was declared more than three and a half years ago. The Dáil declared a climate and biodiversity emergency on 9 May 2019. Ireland's emissions have continued to rise, despite the fact that the world is burning. Those words were used by the Minister for Finance at the time of the budget last year. The words were forgotten this year but the planet continues to burn. I may be reading the Minister of State's body language wrong - I am not sure - but the words the Minister used were "the world is burning".

Ireland's emissions continue to rise. There was a 4.7% rise in 2021 compared with 2020. That is according to the EPA, not the radical Deputies on this side of the Dáil coming up with figures out of the sky. Transport emissions accounted for 17.7% of total national greenhouse gas emissions, and road transport accounted for 94% of all transport emissions. We have cited all these figures over and over again. What we want is a complete transformation. I hear the Minister of State's good news and the good news in Galway about BusConnects and so on. What is missing is the realisation that we need urgent transformative action. We cannot continue with the model of consumption we have and the model of trading in the free market we have had. That is carried into aviation and into emissions coming from aeroplanes, in respect of which we have the emissions trading scheme, which allows airlines and countries to barter emissions. Can you imagine? The very system that caused climate change in the first place, the very unregulated market that allowed for endless consumption, is now put into the airlines as part of the solution. It just beggars belief.

Deputy Pringle has given the example of Luxembourg, which works from a free transport system. Has anyone in this Government looked at Luxembourg to see what the good and the bad are in that regard? Has anyone looked at Germany, which has introduced a €9 per month public transport ticket for a limited time? I believe that public transport was overwhelmed with people wanting to use the ticket. Has anyone examined that? Has anybody gone over there on a delegation to see and to learn? What about Malta, which introduced free transport, I understand, on 1 October? Does the Government think we could learn from that? The reason the Government is not doing that is that it wants to continue tinkering with the system as opposed to recognising that this is it and that we have only a tiny window to make the changes. Of all the changes needed, transport is not the easiest, but it is the most tangible area where we can make a difference. Free public transport has to be an aim and a target of the Government. If the Government cannot do it overnight, it has to recognise that it is what we need. The fact that the Government has introduced reduced fares is very welcome, but we see that the people are way ahead of us. They want to use public transport.

I will finish by going back to Galway. I appeal to the Minister of State to take Galway on as a pilot project. It is a beautiful city, with the Corrib river and the sea, and in between we have allowed terrible planning and transport decisions that see our city congested and that are threatening the viability of our industry there. Park-and-ride was put into the city development plan in 2005 but never rolled out. We now have the NTA telling us it is looking at one side of the city. We have children who cannot get on school buses. We are constantly told the figures for children who use school buses but we fail to realise that school buses should be used to their maximum potential to get as many people as possible on them. We have a university in Galway and the residents in Connemara are begging the university to put on a bus in order that the students can get from Cois Fharraige isteach go dtí an ollscoil, agus níl aon duine ag éisteacht leo. This is a positive motion. This is something we can work on together.

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