Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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57. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will report on the Climate Action Plan for 2023 in respect of the transport sector; what actions are still outstanding from 2023; the timeline for delivery of these delayed actions; how he thinks delayed actions will impact on rising emissions in the sector; his plans to address rising emissions in the sector; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4449/24]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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Progress Reports on the delivery of commitments outlined in our Climate Action Plan 2023 are prepared by the Department of the Taoiseach and published on a quarterly basis. Under this reporting mechanism, attention is drawn to a selection of ‘high impact’ measures from the CAP23 Annex of Actions with more significant emissions reduction and/or abatement potential. In 2023, my Department reported on 26 such actions for the transport sector, and provided final updates on the delivery status of these actions for review in early January.

Pending final confirmation from the Department of the Taoiseach, it is anticipated that the delivery rate of CAP23 commitments for transport will stand at approximately 61.5%, with 16 of these 26 high-impact actions completed. My Department is engaging with officials in the Department of the Taoiseach on which of the remaining 10 outstanding actions are proposed to be carried forward in the Annex of Actions that accompanies the draft Climate Action Plan 2024, which was published in December 2023, or otherwise recorded.

I am satisfied that the majority of these outstanding actions are subject to short-term delays owing to planning, legislative and consultation processes among other issues and they will not impact on our emissions reduction targets in the medium-term. Further detail on each of these delayed actions will be provided in the forthcoming Progress Report to be issued by the Department of the Taoiseach.

Table 1: CAP23 Transport Actions which are delayed

The draft Climate Action Plan 2024, which was published in December 2023, provides further information on commitments and the significant key achievements that were delivered in 2023 and our plans for the sector’s decarbonisation, which is set out in line with the AVOID-SHIFT-IMPROVE framework for greater transport sustainability.

Some examples of key achievements have included measures such as the ongoing expansion of rural mobility services under the NTA’s Connecting Ireland programme, completion of the first projects under our Sustainable Mobility Policy Pathfinder Programme, publication of our National Cycle Network Strategy, the publication of our National EV Charging Infrastructure Strategy and National En-Route EV Charging plan, update of our Renewable Transport Fuel Policy, the launch of the ‘Your Journey Counts’ national advertising campaign, the completion of new and revised Metropolitan Area Transport Strategies for the Waterford, Limerick-Shannon and Greater Dublin Areas, alongside the progression of BusConnects, DART+ and Metrolink through major milestones in our consultative and planning systems.

Irish drivers are also accelerating the switch to electric vehicles, with over 107,000 EVs on our roads at the end of 2023, and ahead of our profiled trajectory to meeting our 2025 targets. The take-up of EVs will be bolstered by significant expansions in our public charging infrastructure in coming years. We have also seen record growth in public transport patronage in 2023, representing a 24% increase on 2023 and surpassing pre-Covid passenger numbers.

Nonetheless, I acknowledge that we face a particular challenge in the transport sector in the face of the growth in transport emissions that is associated with the rapid return to economic growth following the Covid19 pandemic, coupled with full employment and continued population growth in Ireland. Though the overall emissions trend since 2018 is downward and 2022 emissions were 4.5% lower than 2018 levels, we face an urgent need to reverse this trend to avoid jeopardizing the sector’s capacity to achieve its abatement pathway in future years.

Decoupling the direct correlation between transport emissions and wider social and economic activity thus forms the fundamental challenge for the sector. For this reason, our focus is on pursuing measures to address travel demand - in the first instance by pursuing policy measures that promote greater efficiency in our transport system, allied with significant investment in sustainable alternatives and incentives and regulatory measures to promote the accelerated take-up of low carbon technologies. I will be bringing a draft Demand Management Strategy to Government in the coming months, which will set out a range of policy measures aimed at reducing congestion in our towns and cities, and reducing transport emissions more broadly.

In addition to setting out proposed actions to be progressed in 2024 across our key delivery programmes, the transport chapter of Climate Action Plan 2024 sets out the scale of the challenge involved and articulates and brings clear focus to the key internal and external risks to delivery that must be addressed, identifying inflation and the need for sustained and significant Exchequer funding, improvements in our planning and consenting processes, securing public and political acceptance, alongside market capacity and technical capacity and supply chain risks associated with the roll-out of EV charging infrastructure and alternative fuel supply as examples.

Addressing these risks and challenges requires a range of whole-of-Government responses, including a clear prioritisation of the demands being made on the system against their potential to contribute to the abatement targets set, along with a cross-Government partnership approach, involving relevant Departments, Local Authorities, industry, academia, and wider society. Through the various Task Forces and other stakeholder engagement structures my Department has put in place, there is a strong focus on collaborative action to address these risks.

In this vein, we will review any recommendations that may be raised under the forthcoming public consultation process on the draft Climate Action Plan 2024, which will be undertaken over the coming weeks as part of the Strategic Environment Assessment and Appropriate Assessments of the Climate Action Plan.