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

Transport is one of the top two emitting sectors of greenhouse gases. Most of this comes from private cars. To get these numbers down and improve people's lives on a daily basis, we need a massive modal shift away from cars, and people sitting in traffic for an hour on their way to work and for an hour on their way home, into quality public transport and active travel. This means investing many more billions to ensure public transport becomes frequent, green and fast for everyone in the country and provides a real alternative to the private car. It also means making public transport free to incentivise people with cars to make the shift. There is plenty of evidence from where free public transport has been introduced that a whole number of people give up their car entirely. For example, in Marseille in France, approximately 10% of people gave up their cars. At present it is often cheaper, once you already own a car, to use it as much as possible rather than to take public transport. Instead we need to switch those incentives and make public transport free for all.

Last week I was in Limerick to launch the campaign of our mayoral candidate, Ruairí Fahy. I was very taken by one of his campaign proposals to make Limerick a pilot city for free public transport. It would join the more than 100 cities throughout the world that have introduced free public transport. Would the Taoiseach support the demand for the idea of a pilot project and a trial for free public transport in Limerick which, if successful, would be rolled out throughout the country?

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