Paul Murphy: Government delaying public transport investment

It's a question to the Minister whether he's going to seek additional investment in public transport in light of the fuel crisis. Two days ago the Minister got the Climate Change Advisory Council annual review of transport. It's pretty damning in terms of an assessment that already the sectoral emissions ceiling has been exceeded, the 2025 one projected to exceed the second one, and calling for investment expedited in a range of public transport infrastructure projects. Will the Minister go along with that? I'll take the question Deputy on behalf of the Minister. As you know offering a more affordable and sustainable alternative for many people, public transport has had a particularly important role to play in responding to demand driven by the whole fluctuating geopolitical developments as we've said, which is as you know consequently and consistently impacting on the cost of fuel. As we all know, the rising fuel costs increase the likelihood of car users switching to public transport and we've seen that and that modal shift is on people. What we have and what we do have Deputy Murphy is an increase in people using public transport. As you know in terms of targeted measures to further support the impacted sectors in April this year, government approved and introduced a range of measures to mitigate rising fuel costs including the road transport support scheme and additional supports for bus and coach operators including providing TFI local link and school transport services. These supports which worked approximately 120 million for over three months are helping operators manage pressures and are maintaining service levels. While operating in an uncertain environment, the immediate priority for our department and the NTA has been to protect existing services and to ensure continuity across the network within the resources allocated to the PSO programme for this year. Where opportunities arise to enhance services to it in a timely and practical way, these will be actively considered and progressed and the Department of Transport and the NTA continue to remain in close contact with operators to maintain and to monitor demand and also to the operational impacts and it's I think important to outline Ciarán that we are carefully considering all aspects of what's happening at the moment within the available resources so that we can continue to provide effective sustainable public transport that we can see benefits for the people. Additionally our fare structures in Ireland for public transport compare very favourably with European counterparts and I'll come back further in a bunch of other other comments. Thanks Ciarán, go raibh maith agat. Thanks I mean we're in a deep climate crisis and we are missing our sectoral emissions targets in terms of transport as well as our targets as a whole by a very wide margin. We're in a cost of living crisis and an immediate answer to both of those is investment in public transport and yet what the government is doing is delaying investment in necessary public transport projects. So let me quote from the Climate Change Advisory Review. Under the current national development plan DART plus Southwest construction will not commence until post 2030 and construction of Lewis Finglas will not commence until 2029. The delays in construction for these shovel ready projects are unnecessary. The council believes that allocation of funding to advance both projects should be expedited and strongly recommends that the government commit funding to these projects in budget 2027. Are you going to do that? Why is this delay taking place? You can't blame planning, you can't blame funds. I'll ask a question. Is it because of grid issues? Because the data centres are effectively using up all of the power in the greater Dublin area. I think the fundamental point that Deputy Murphy misses is that in the budget we secured an extraordinary allocation 940 million for our PSO services in the budget which was a 43% uplift. What Minister O'Brien has said earlier and what I'll repeat again now is that the focus for this year is on the whole piece around stabilisation. It's on the piece to ensure that services already in place can operate reliably and sustainably and that we can see progressive improvements in other services. I think the other point Deputy is that we are meeting our climate change objectives. We are seeing more and more people moving to public transport. There is a commitment to electrification of the fleets. We've seen more investment in that area than ever before and we are very much committed to having a reliable public transport system that is both a movement away from the old style public transport provision to electric trains and buses and we see that across the country and including the City of Dublin as well. Sorry Minister, could you repeat that for me? Did you just say we are meeting our climate change targets? We're meeting them in terms of we're moving away from fossil fuel vehicles to... Sorry, if you can repeat it on the record, we are meeting our climate change targets. What I'm saying is we're moving towards electrification of the fleets. That's what I'm saying. That's not our climate change targets. Our legally binding climate change targets are set out and say we have to reduce in this sector and that sector by certain amounts. Let me quote from the Climate Change Advisory Review. The sector has likely exceeded its first sectoral emission ceiling 2021-2025 and is projected to exceed its second 2026-2030. You're not meeting your climate targets. You're not coming anywhere close to meeting your climate targets and then you're trying to lull people into sleep by saying things that are just inaccurate that we're meeting our climate change targets. Let me ask you the question. The fundamental point you're missing is that the government is choosing to delay investment in public transport. That's a fact against the advice of the Climate Change Advisory Council. I'll say it again. Is the reason that you're not proceeding with the project because all the power is going to the data centres. Let me quote from the briefing note prepared for the government's major project Governance Oversight Group which warned there's insufficient power in the ESB network. The target is 100 percent. You need 10 times more power than you know. Where's the power going to come from? I know Deputy Murphy doesn't want to hear good news and that's and it's the case of the opposition to be to be able to to come in and harrick and barrack and that's all right. We're politicians. I understand that. One in four is going to public transport investment. One in eight spent on public transport. I said to you again 43 percent uptake in the budget this year. I'd ask you to read the NDP plan on transport. Have you read it? You'd see in it the government's commitment in terms of provisioning public transport, electrification of the fleet, purchase of new vehicles, movement away from the diesel engine. You don't want to hear good news. If you had your way we'd have no bus connects, we'd have no car commuter rail, we'd have no Metrolink, we'd have no dark and you'd be saying what are we doing? The reality is the reality is we're developing a transport plan. You got to answer to Deputy O'Byrne and you didn't like it.