Bríd Smith criticises vague climate plan and public transport fares

Thanks Chair and thanks Minister for your presentation. Just on the last point about apprenticeships and trying to bring young people into the sort of training that we need them in, to my knowledge apprentices still pay college fees and that's something that really should be cancelled and if you do one thing have a word with Simon Harris about that because there's an awful lot of working class men and women, young men and women who can't afford those fees and that's very off-putting if you're trying to get into some kind of training. I'm not being rude to you but an awful lot of what you said here today is in your mind. It's not in the plan, it's in your mind and I think that's a problem that the plan is vague, it's not specific about so many things and two things I want to concentrate on are public transport and the national herd. First of all, only yesterday you welcomed an increase in the fares in Dublin public transport and I think that sends a completely wrong message to people. to increase the cost of people to increase the cost of people to increase the cost of transport to them. You want people to move from their cars so that we can help achieve Ireland's carbon reduction emissions. The last thing you want to do is increase the cost of public transport to people. Secondly, if I might just say that in the plan you have a target of 500,000, half a million sustainable journeys, could you tell us, and you need an answer immediately for me, how many of them will be by public transport will be by cycling and walking? Because the NTA plan that they released last week for the Greater Dublin area estimates an increase of under 4% in the use of public transport by 2042. That is astounding and it's so unambitious that it's kind of frightening to think that we have a climate action plan and these are the low ambitious targets of the body that runs the National Transport Authority. That's two minutes, Deputy Smith. Sorry? That's two minutes. It's not two minutes, is it? It is indeed. Go ahead if you want to finish out your question. The obvious thing is to ask you to comment on the ambition to have a million EV cars on the road which is just out of kilter with any idea that that will reduce targets. I would like you to say something about the national herd because there is nothing in the plan that says we need to reduce it. And yet last year we increased it by 1.5% to 7.3 million head of cattle, whether that's dairy or beef. And I think that's the elephant in the room, that we're not prepared to do that. And we make a commitment, you know, that's been pointed out time and time again. On a global scale we reduce methane by 30%, but here at home it will only be by 10%. And you listed a number of ways of doing it, but dare not you touch the herd. Thank you. Thank you Deputy Smith. That's pretty shameful and I would like you to comment on it. Thank you Deputy Smith. Minister. Thank you Deputy Smith. Minister. Thank you Deputy Smith. Firstly, that announcement yesterday was to reduce the cost of public transport because for the first time it allowed a 90 minute ticket. So that the one ticket allows you to go from a Dart to a bus to a Lewis back to a bus. And that was all about actually reducing public, increasing the use and reducing the cost. So that's about getting good connectivity and encouraging people onto public transport, which I think it will. And that combined particularly with the 50% reduction that we're looking to introduce, we will introduce next year for people under the age of 24. Again, it's another example where I recognise we have to make it affordable as well as reliable and frequent. I don't have, I'll have to provide to you separately because I don't have the exact breakdown in terms of what the modelling is, but I would say one thing on this. The key point here is that it is switching fuels, it is shifting modal split and it is reduction. Now the exact numbers, the exact modelling is an inexact science when you're looking 10 years into the future. In my mind, I'd actually expect that we will over deliver in that. And I think sometimes I'll be giving my own personal view. I think the modelling doesn't really know are its assumptions of what happens when you provide good quality, particularly active travel infrastructure, is that it doesn't quite know how to measure it. I'll give an example when the cycle route along the Grand Canal, which was better quality than anything previously built, was introduced. There was an almost immediate jump in 50% of cycling journeys on it. And I'll give you another example. When we recently introduced a new route or regular bus services around the Dingle Peninsula, or we did something similar in Leitrim as part of the, as testers for this new rural public transport system. Again, there was an immediate response, immediate doubling almost of passenger numbers. And so I think the Irish public have shown consistently that when you provide high quality public transport and safe environment for walking and cycling, they switch because who wants to be stuck in traffic? And so I think my expectation that transport being the hardest, I think where we may be able to get up, make up ground because freight will be difficult, haulage is difficult. I think the area where we may be able to make gains is on the switch to, on the shift to active and public transport, because I think people are, do they like, they like being able to be on a bus and be able to be online. They like the exercise they get and the speed and the reliability of cycling and walking. So if we can make it safe and move away from a system that has been dominated for decades about supporting private vehicle transport, I think we may be surprised on the upside in that. On the electric vehicles, just one thought on that. It was interesting coming out again last week, I met the New Zealand minister, a country of similar size as us. They have five million, five and a half million people. They had four and a half million cars. So while we have large car fleet, over whatever, two million car fleet, we're not as bad as some other countries. And even in Glasgow, enough people were there, but God almighty, the roads dominated city was, would be, would make you weep if you're, if you're interested in creating safe, good local environment. So we're not starting from an impossible base. But that figure of one million EVs, in my mind, is just a very ambitious target to effectively switch the fleet. And I do think it's possible. I think it's possible because they're just better cars and they, within two or three years, they will be cheaper in life cycle assessment. And the maintenance cost particularly is, is a fraction. So I do see that coming. But I don't, I don't see that as the, the be all and end all on our decarbonisation of transport. I think the shift and the reduction is equally important. And then lastly, with regard to the national herd, which is a narrative that, as I said, I think both environmentalists and farmers were better off moving away from us. The only narrative people ever talk about when it comes to decarbonisation and agriculture. We do have to focus on emissions reductions as our key metric. We do have to focus on incomes to Irish farming as our key metric. And I think that is possible to come back to what I said earlier on, the diversification that will come where we pay farmers for rewetting land and restoring peat lands and introducing agroforestry. And developing micro generation and anaerobic digestion and switching to horticulture and switching to organic farming where you have less animals, but you've also less costs because you're not spending so much on incredibly expensive fertiliser. And again, just at this moment in time, this is the moment for us to strike because the cost of oil and gas being so high has seen the cost of nitrogen fossil fuel based fertilisers go through the roof. Incredibly expensive now. So this is a moment where we can make that switch. And the key thing is both to reduce emissions and increase income. An age old narrative of farmers at war with environmentalists, that has to stop. They come back to what I said earlier on about those grass people working on retrofitting being the frontline heroes. Well, farmers will be the same because they'll have to help us adapt to climate change as well as store some of the carbon in our soil. And that's absolutely doable. Pay them for it. And lastly, I'd say this coming from your political perspective, which I think you would agree on. The large companies, the large multinational food companies and retailers, they're going to have to account for their scope three emissions in an evolving climate change accounting world. And in that, when they have to be responsible for how their suppliers emissions, in my mind, that gives us an opportunity for them to pay the primary producers, small Irish family farms better for really high quality projects that they produce. So this is an instance, I think, where corporate interests are going to have to acknowledge that they have a climate responsibility and to help their farmers, their suppliers make this switch. And I think that's something that we could and should have brought political agreement on. Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Deputy Smith. In line with that, what did you think of the 70 odd million that was given to the process? Deputy Smith, we will have a second round. If we get through the questions for the first round, we'll go again. We'll go again. And you're welcome to come in again. I'll go to. You