Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Business as usual seems to be the order of the day for the previous speakers. I have long said that I am against the Galway ring road, not because I am against all roads but because we are in the middle of a climate crisis. This is an old solution and new roads on this kind of scale have not been shown to reduce congestion. In fact, they lead to more congestion as we get more sprawl. That said, the attacks on the justice system in relation to judicial reviews by Senator Kyne's party colleague, the Minister of State Deputy Peter Burke, who said that judicial reviews are a moneymaking racket or words to that effect are unwarranted. The parties that take these reviews are often charities. They do it because they are entitled to do so and we should not prevent them from doing so. In fact, we will get to a better planning system if we take these reviews seriously and go through the process. The reason for the increase in judicial reviews is poor planning law, such as the strategic housing development provisions which are now ended. That is what the increase in the last few years was about.

Galway is not like other cities in this country. It does not have large cities on either side of it. A road that would probably cost around €1 billion is oversized for the problem. It is the lack of investment by my colleague's parties - there are Galway Senators sitting on either side of me - over the last couple of decades in anything else that is the problem. They have promised the people of Galway something they have failed to deliver but they have also failed to deliver in areas like public transport. That is where we need to be looking. Only 8% of people in Galway are using bus corridors at the moment. We need to roll those out and we also need to roll out BusConnects and Connecting Ireland.

Where I would agree with Senator Kyne is in relation to the cost of public transport. I would love to see the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, looking at reducing the cost of public transport overall as one of the measures to address the cost of living. We have a couple of crises at the moment. One is the cost of living crisis and another is the climate crisis. We have to deal with both. We have to be serious and not just have business as usual. That is what I am hearing all around me. People are not prepared to take the necessary measures. We have Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors in Galway who are against a temporary cycle lane in Salthill bringing forward a motion next Monday. It seems to be one thing after the other when it comes to these two parties denying that we have to move forward and deal with this crisis.