Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I will start off with a sweetener. One day last weekend, at 8.30 a.m. or 9 a.m., I was stopped by two gardaí near the beach in Tramore and breathalysed. I was asked my permission to be breathalysed, which I gave, and I successfully passed. In fairness to the gardaí, they were most courteous and professional in their approach. I commend the Minister on his legislation in this regard.

Transport is the bitter pill for me. I sat on the Joint Committee on Climate Action for the past nine months until we gave birth to the report which was published last week. The greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector in Ireland are increasing and I cannot see how that will change. The Minister said we can probably agree on four basic principles. Principles are not enough with regard to climate change; we need action and we need it now.

When examining the transport system, in particular the congestion and the timetabling, many aspects of it are inefficient, ineffective and broken. For example, I refer to the Clonmel to Waterford train service. The first train leaves Clonmel at 10.38 a.m. Waterford is home to the Waterford Institute of Technology, the Central Technical Institute and a number of academic institutes, which means many people work in Waterford, yet that train leaves at 10.38 a.m. That is ludicrous but that is indicative of many other rail services in this country. We just do not have enough of them. My first request is that the Minister examines the efficiency and effectiveness of the rail network in delivering freight and passengers to their destinations in the urban centres.We agree public transport has to be increased but how exactly is the Minister going to do that? How is he going to incentivise transport in this country where people are addicted to their personalised vehicle? When I am travelling, I see individuals operating in their cars. We see an increase in investment in cars. While I welcome the investment in electric cars, we do not have the infrastructure to support that network so we have this phenomenon called charging stress, I think, where people get into a dilemma that they will not be able to reach their destination with the EV system. We need better support in that regard. My big questions relates to how we are going to bring the public to the public transport systems that are in place now, and how we can increase the numbers using public transport into the future. There has been some increase but not enough.

The Minister did not mention sea transport and I thought as an island nation and with Brexit looming that it might be an area he would address. How can we move people away from aviation and have an attractive way for people to use sea transport? There will be an increase in the freight lines with Brexit coming on. Regardless of Brexit, one of the interesting discussions I have had with people over recent months related to the mechanisms to get freight and passengers around the UK by bypassing it one way or another and having better transport mechanisms from Ireland directly to the Continent, including to France, Rotterdam Europoort or Zeebrugge in Belgium. What is being done in that regard to support freight industry and transport people by sea?

The Minister said that BusConnects will be rolled out across all major cities. As Senator Humphreys noted, Project Ireland 2040 involves regionalisation and moving away from the congestion and overpriced living in Dublin and highlights the importance of developing infrastructure in regional centres. The Minister stated the programme will be rolled out, that it will be transformative, and that the services "will be...". It is all aspirational. We start off with the principles and now we go into the aspiration. It is not happening and it needs to happen, for the climate strikers who have been outside Leinster House and outside the local authorities around the country. We need action. We do not need any more aspiration. We need that seismic shift. Senator Humphreys referred to the electrification of Irish Rail. Can the Minister show us the path from where we are now? Rather than a slow, step-by-step approach, is there a possibility for a seismic shift into electrified system? Can the Government move Irish Rail directly from the infrastructure that is in place to an electrified system within a short timeframe? We bypass an intermediate stage of continuing to use fossil fuels and go right to electric. That would show commitment to our climate change targets.

On rural bus routes, I have had a few people contact me about the circular route. They find it is not working for them in terms of efficiency and getting from A to B. If they leave from one place, they almost have to do a round trip to get to the other. It is not efficient for users and the Minister might look into how he could make it more so. On cycling, the world's largest cycling conference, Velo-city, is coming to Ireland in June. This is going to be great from a tourism perspective but also to encourage cycling. Is it possible to front some investment in advance of this conference to underpin its success? There a disparity between the number of males and females who are cycling. Would the Minister look into this and into how he could invest in increasing the numbers of girls and women cycling?