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

The only aspect of Ireland's public transport ticketing system that the Greenpeace report praises is free public transport for people over 66, people with disabilities and carers. It states that, apart from this, there are no best-practice elements in the ticketing system. It finds that Dublin has the second most expensive daily public transport costs in Europe, second only to London, which of course has a much better transport system. The report praises free public transport and climate tickets as some of the most popular policy interventions to tackle the climate crisis. It states that if even 5% of car trips were shifted to public transport throughout the EU, oil demand could be reduced by around 7.9 million tonnes. We can already see what impact free public transport would have from the large increase in public transport use that was a consequence of the 20% reduction in fares last year and the 50% reduction for young people. The bottom line is that we do not have to choose between investing in expanding access to public transport and making public transport free. We will have a cumulative surplus of €65 billion over the next five years. This is what we need to do for the climate and to address the cost-of-living crisis.

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