Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

First, I commend the Ministers, Deputies McGrath and Donohoe, the Ministers of State in their respective Departments and the officials in their Department who worked tirelessly to deliver this budget last Tuesday. I commend the leaders of the three parties in government. Everybody on this side of the House would acknowledge that there were very serious and intense negotiations between the three leaders but they would not have been doing their duty if they did not bring those negotiations to the very last evening and get the best they could for the people and for the respective agendas of the different parties.

I think we have landed on an excellent budget. It will stand the test of time and reflect well on the three parties in government and reflect well on this term in government.

I want to speak on transport and how it is provided for in the budget that was announced on Tuesday. One of the main provisions is that we will maintain the 20% cut in public transport fares. It was a temporary cut which was introduced a few years ago and is being maintained for 2024. That is very positive. The 50% cut for young people is not only being maintained, but it is being extended to those aged 24 and 25 years so another cohort will enjoy lower fairs. When these cuts were introduced as a cost-of-living measure two years ago, there was a step change in patronage on our buses and trains. It should be very obvious to any public transport user that we have a huge challenge in the delivery of new services and infrastructure. This Government is doing that in respect of many project and the kinds of projects that do not get announced on budget day but that are announced over the Government’s term of office such as BusConnects, Connecting Ireland, the recent strategic rail review, the town bus services and the western rail corridor which I heard Deputy Kenny mention earlier and which should be a priority project. These are critically important now. It gives the lie to the objective of making public transport free. This narrative that has entered our debate is very unhelpful. Anyone who uses public transport can see that where the effort and energy must go into improving and increasing services and developing infrastructure. Doing so is not easy. The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has spoken numerous times about how we have to look to the planning system to speed up the delivery of these key projects. That is happening with the review of the Planning and Development Act. Many speakers have mentioned the infrastructure fund of €14 billion over the next seven years. That will also play a role in delivering this sort of infrastructure, particularly in the event of a down turn in the economy, which we hope will not happen. I have been looking at the public spending code in recent weeks. My view is we should look at this. The amount of hoops a project must jump through between inception and delivery is quite incredible. Each one involves onerous, bureaucratic and administrative tasks on the part of project teams across the country. Invariably, this is a reason why it takes us so long to develop projects. In the context of a climate emergency, we need to look at the key infrastructure projects and the barriers to them. I believe the public spending code is something we need to look at much more closely.

An objective of mine in this Government is to see supports for purchasing electric vehicles being given to those who need electric vehicles most. I am particularly talking about the homecare and home help sector workers. They are generally low paid, utterly car dependent and use their own vehicles for the work they do. They provide very valuable work to our society and through no fault of their own are part of the story of transport carbon emissions. We gave generous supports to taxi drivers in recent years to buy electric vehicles and we should look at giving such supports to our home care workers.

Recently, at the joint committee, members of all parties and none were astounded and aghast at presentations from experts on the vast increasing trend towards sales of heavier and larger vehicles. We heard how not only are these a huge safety concern on streets in our towns and villages and in rural Ireland, as well as our cities, but they are causing congestion and they are a public health hazard. Furthermore, they will make it a lot harder for us to meet our carbon budgets. I think I am out of time. In our next budget, we will have to look to apply whatever financial instrument we can to reverse the trend in heavy vehicle sales.

See this speech in context