Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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For the transport sector, we are required to pursue a decarbonisation pathway to achieve a 50% reduction in transport emissions by 2030 in a manner that is consistent with sectoral emission ceilings that were agreed by Government in August 2022.

The transport chapter of the annually updated national Climate Action Plan (CAP) sets out the policy pathway to achieve these emission reductions and uses an Avoid-Shift-Improve framework where the aim is to:

• Avoid generating unsustainable additional transport demand through better spatial and land-use planning.
• Shift to more sustainable modes of transport, such as active travel and public transport.
• Improve the efficiency of residual vehicle journeys through widespread electrification and the use of renewable alternative fuels.

The Climate Action Plans, which are updated nationally, are underpinned by a detailed Annex of Actions, and reported upon quarterly by the Department of An Taoiseach. We have already seen positive progress in all aspects of the Avoid-Shift-Improve framework, and expect to see continued progress in 2025:

Avoid - My Department is developing a new national strategy, Moving Together, which seeks to encourage a collective and collaborative approach to behavioural change, in an effort to reduce or avoid the need for unsustainable travel - insofar as possible - across all areas of the economy and society. It is also expected to have a key role in reducing congestion and air pollution, and in meeting the CAP23 commitment of reducing total vehicle kilometres travelled, both private and commercial, by 20%. I look forward to progressing work on the draft recommendations within the strategy, which will complement and mutually reinforce the significant investment that is being made in public transport services and active travel infrastructure to help ‘Shift’ people to more sustainable modes like walking, cycling, public and shared transport.

Shift - My Department has allocated approximately €293 million to fund the NTA Active Travel programme, which supports a range of walking and cycling schemes. In addition, my Department and TII has committed to spending €67 million on Greenways and National Roads Active Travel infrastructure in 2025. It is expected that approximately 24km of Greenways will be delivered in 2025 including enhancements to the South East Greenway and continued works on the South Kerry Greenway. A further 60 Greenway schemes will receive funding to move through the planning and design stages.

A new phase of the BusConnects Network Redesign was launched earlier this year which includes 13 new routes including two 24-hour services, increased airport connectivity, and eight new local routes providing links to local centres and onward transport connections.

Improve - At the end of December 2024, there were over 148,000 EVs on Irish roads. We are still seeing steady growth in the number of EV registrations and the year-on-year growth from February 2024 to February 2025 was 41,417 vehicles. Additionally, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) continues to see increases in our biofuel blend rates, and increased the volume of biofuel supply by 60% between 2021 and 2023, representing displacement of two hundred thousand tonnes of CO2 each year.

The full annex of CAP actions for reducing emissions in the transport sector can be viewed on gov.ie. While it is too early to make predictions regarding transport emissions for 2025, the latest available data from the EPA, released in July 2024, suggests that emissions in the transport sector are beginning to level off. The data shows that the transport sector’s emissions increased marginally by 0.3% in 2023 with emissions 4.3% below 2019 pre-Covid levels. Meanwhile, our economy grew by 5% in 2023 (GNI), pointing to a decoupling of economic growth and transport emissions and signifying that increases in emissions are being offset by increased public transport use, clean transport initiatives, and enhanced biofuel blend rates. Further updates on emissions of the transport sector will be available later this year.