Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Having listened to some of the Government representatives tonight I believe they either come from very different places than I do or they are not being forthright in the context of the reality of many people. I come from a county that has no real transport network whatsoever. It has a bus service that has actually deteriorated since this Government came into office. It is astounding that not only did the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, not participate in this debate, not a single member of the Green Party decided to grace us with their presence tonight.

Under the current framework of this Government the only things that the people in County Monaghan see in the lived reality are increased charges through carbon taxes, which are essentially penalties, for not using services that do not exist. People must pay more to this Government to get to work in their cars because there is no option but to use their cars. They must pay more to this Government to go to college because they cannot find accommodation in the places where they go to college. Increasingly this year they must pay more to this Government to drive with their children every morning behind the school bus to the local school and collect them every afternoon because the Government made such a hames of the school transport system for many families this year. This is simply not fair.

It is simply not fair to always spout rhetoric about just transition, public transport and moving away from the car, and then penalise people for using their cars when the Government refuses to put alternatives in place. That needs to be called out and this motion calls it out. I commend Deputy O'Rourke on tabling it. If the Government is serious about moving away from fuel-powered engines, it needs to put in place the infrastructure, not through petty removal of funding for roads like the Clontibret to the Border road scheme, as the Minister did this year, without a whimper from his Government colleagues in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but by providing investment to ensure people can get buses to places other than O'Connell Street. At the minute, you cannot get a bus to anywhere else from my county. We must put in place a blueprint that will deliver a rail network and allow us to have a sustainable route to living, working and rearing our families.

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