Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The IPCC report is not about goals or ambition because the Government clearly has those. It is the rate of pace at which we are putting the items in our action plan into action. I will break that down in respect of how it can work in rural Ireland and urban areas, especially in the area of electric vehicle, EV, sales. The good news is EV sales increased by 50% in the first couple of months of 2023 compared with the previous year. That is good. The bad news is fossil fuel cars grew even more as regards units sold. We need to see more incentives for the purchase of EV cars in order to get people away from fossil fuel cars. Average car journeys are by far the greatest in rural areas.

In urban areas, we need to ramp up the roll-out of BusConnects. I would like an update on where BusConnects is in Cork and Dublin. It is a political hot potato but in order to address this issue we need to be climate brave. We need to start rolling out the likes of BusConnects and getting it up and running.

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