James Carroll (Fianna Fail)

When the smarter travel initiative was launched in February 2009 it had an estimated implementation cost of €4.5 billion, a vast amount of money when examined in the harsh light of today's economic vista. The Minister of State, Deputy Cuffe, in his extensive contribution, mentioned spatial strategy reform and how this ties into public transport reform and improvement. This will be key when we analyse smarter travel and how it will be delivered in future. To deliver a truly smarter travel plan, we must look at some key factors, one of which is that Ireland has western Europe's lowest population density and is the only EU country with a lower population than it had 200 years ago. This means there is huge potential for population and public transport growth in the future. We can and must develop this by reaching a point of dense population in city centres which will improve the quality of life of our people, make our local and national economies more productive and make public transport truly viable, with a extensive demand for its service.

Ireland needs to be ambitions and we, in Seanad Éireann, should tie our goals in with those of Dáil Éireann. We should aim to have population targets in the future, one of which is that we should have a target of 5 million people in the Republic by 2020 and 6 million in the Republic by 2050. This is more than achievable. The reason I say that is in light of the motion that we really start to focus on smart travel as a philosophy. As the Minister of State said, that philosophy can only be fed if the correct spatial and planning strategies are tied in with it.

When doing research for this debate, I looked at other countries and a country about which we forget is Israel. Some 50 years ago, Israel was very underdeveloped but we should look at where it is now in terms of culture, competitiveness and infrastructure. Israel's population has surged from 2 million in 1948 to 7 million today. The Israeli nation has rebuilt itself in a way that puts our problems into perspective. I read a book by Marc Coleman, the economics editor in Newstalk, in which he stated that if we were never as good as we thought we were, then we are not as bad as we think we are now. The media would be wise to heed this point.

Looking at the specifics of the motion, we must consider all the issues systematically. A vital issue is to address the competitive nature of our public transport, whether rail or bus, and how we tackle this in future. Over the past ten years, prices have increased in bus and rail, which I used regularly to get to Dublin when in college and working here and which I now use as a Member of Seanad Éireann.

In some respects, the failure of local and national politicians to grasp the need to urbanise and build high quality apartments, whether building cities upwards rather than outwards, was a major contributor to high house prices and many of the loans on NAMA's books. Cities like Philadelphia offer Ireland inspiration on how it could look forward towards its goals for 2020 and 2050. As the youngest Member of Seanad Éireann, I would like us to place a keen focus on that.

In the right locations, the economic benefits of high rise development are ones we can no longer do without. Dublin city quays are arguably more suited to high rise buildings than other places that have been proposed and for which planning applications have been submitted. High density does not necessarily mean high rise buildings everywhere. Cities like Frankfurt and Berlin show how a limited and targeted use of high rise buildings can cluster population in cost effective ways that make for a good quality of life, truly smart travel and public transport quality. There are many benefits to this. People who were forced to move outside Dublin have been subjected to long commutes, negative equity and social exile. That is something we must change immediately.

To achieve my modest population targets for 2020 and 2050, we must make changes to our planning and densification goals to channel them into city centres and not have sprawling commuter towns. I was disappointed the Fine Gael motion focused primarily on Dublin and did not look outside it in its goals and objectives. That is where the motion fell down.

We must look at the price of land. By forcing the State to pay prices based on lands' building potential, land zoned for development is a monopoly good, the value of which has been created by the State as a result of lack of action. The failure to implement the recommendations of the Kenny report for more than 35 years has been the single biggest reason for the escalation of property prices and we must address this. I urge the Minister of State to look at that. The former head of the IDA and the current chair of Louth's economic forum, Padraic White, pointed to outdated legislation as the cause for high land prices in the previous decade.

We must maintain a key focus on some statistics, especially as we look towards smarter travel. Ireland's population has increased by more than 0.5 million since 2002. The natural population increase in 2008 - births minus deaths - was 47,000, so our population is naturally growing. We need to tackle that and tie in our public transport towards that objective. From an average of 3.1 persons in 1996 to 2.81 in 2006 and extrapolating that trend forward to 2.64 by 2012, this seemingly small change will have no profound implications but if we look at what that means in regard to dwellings, 1 million people in 1996 would need 318,000 houses but that same 1 million people would need 378,000 dwellings by 2012, an increase of more than 60,000. That is crazy and we need to look at reforming that. That is why my correspondence with the Minister of State in the future will encourage him to focus on this. Denmark's national central planning unit co-ordinates the zoning activities of all regional and local authorities, rents are policed, the price of land is regulated and cities are dense enough to be highly economically productive. That is key to this debate.

We must ensure we have consumers to use public transport, whether new Luas services, new Dublin Bus routes or train services. Quality of life is a key issue and I listened intently to "Morning Ireland" this morning which talked about Cloughjordan's eco village, which has a train station nearby. I watched the YouTube video of it first thing this morning and it was heartening to watch what people with noble goals have done. This all ties in together.

I refer to the success of the cycle hire scheme in Dublin. I am a proud member of the scheme but unlike the Minister of State, I do not carry my card in my breast pocket. I used the scheme yesterday. We should examine rolling it out to other urban areas and extending it further within Dublin. As a student in 2003, I went on a cycling tour of Munich and one gets a different sense of a city when one cycles around it for a number of hours. This is where smart travel, public transport and tourism can be tied in together. That is really important because this is where we can really see progress for our citizens and tourists coming to this country.

I refer to the new electric vehicles. A memorandum of understanding in regard to the provision of electric cars was signed with Renault-Nissan. A fund was set up for electric cars and captive fleets. However, we should be more ambitious and more aggressive in these policies. Ambition, aggression and key targets will be the key for all of us.