Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

That report was effectively rigged. It managed to come up with a car usage reduction figure of 1% by running simulated modelling based on current trends across the country, where public transport is mainly poor or non-existent. Most car users do not have access to public transport alternatives, meaning that making public transport free would not change their car usage. The point, however, is that there does not have to be a choice between expanding access to public transport and making public transport free; we need to do both. That is precisely where the idea of a shared car or hourly car library scheme comes in. There are journeys that people take occasionally that are not easy to take on public transport, therefore requiring the use of a car. At the moment, the main choice people have is to own a car, an environmentally costly thing to build and an expensive thing to run. It makes much more sense to have cars available on a common basis, where possible. There are private schemes of this kind, such as that of GoCar, but such a scheme should be part of the public offering. The Ernst & Young report did not take this into account and assumed that if someone needed to take a private car journey occasionally, he or she would need to own a car.

See this speech in context