Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Deputy’s sense of frustration and with his sense of vision and opportunity here. I will commend my Department to accelerate the various different measures we need to make, and not just my Department but others as well. The underlying reasoning behind what the Deputy says, namely, economic gain and savings for householders, as well as improved emissions, is very real.

Private car-sharing operators have a role and they are significantly expanding. There are now a number of different operators such as GoCar, YUKÕ, Enterprise Car Club, Driveyou, Hertz, in Dublin. For example, GoCar has something like 1,000 vehicles available to book. It is expanding and growing but not at the speed and scale that I believe, and the Deputy believes, is possible. Perhaps the key project that would really allow that to expand is the introduction of some 200 mobility hubs that we are looking at, where there would be both shared bikes and shared cars. An example was built in Finglas three years ago. I have been frustrated that it has taken quite some time to take that first prototype example and look to see it expand. We have climate funding available to support that but we still have further work to do in the business case to pick the locations and devise the exact model for delivery. That will come later this year and there will be funding. We have allocated up to €40 million to help that to be rolled out. That could be a game changer in the scale and vision that the Deputy sees and talks about.

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