The Tánaiste has said budget 2027 will prioritise workers who get up early every morning, yet the hundreds of thousands of workers who get up early every morning to catch a bus, train or Luas find they are being targeted by the Government to pay more. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have made a choice. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, they have chosen now as a good time to hike up public transport fares - not by the rate of inflation, which is 3% or 4%, but by an average of 15%, and far more for some journeys. F…

When the NTA came before us in the transport committee last Wednesday, it was very clear that this fare increase is not about delivering extra services next year; this is about providing the exact same level of service this year as last year. Public transport users are getting nothing extra.

That is what they told us. That is what they said. The Tánaiste says they are wrong. None of the 145 extra routes he is talking about are funded. Again, that is all conditional on decisions coming up before the budget. The NTA did tell us the consequence of this decision. It is 4.5% fewer passengers using public transport next year. That is going to be the consequence and the legacy. The Tánaiste is right: this is about choices and priorities. In the previous Government, the Green Party chose to reduce fares and de…

Families need help with their energy bills this winter but deferring the carbon tax is the very worst way of going about that. Irish households are suffering from a cost-of-living crisis that, at its heart, is driven by our country's dependence on fossil fuels. The carbon tax remains the only part of our entire taxation system which is designed to help the country and help individual families break that dependence on fossil fuels. To defer the carbon tax at this point would fundamentally undermine this goal. Some 2…

When the KPMG report on data centres was initially published it raised serious questions around whether a meaningful cost-benefit analysis was being undertaken in relation to the economic impact of data centres, particularly when it coincided so closely with the publication of academic analysis that showed households have seen their energy bills increase by hundreds of euro due to data centre demand driving up wholesale prices. Now it appears, through freedom of information requests, that the conclusions of the rep…

Good policy requires that we assess benefits and costs. If the Government is confident in its approach towards data centre expansion, then it should have no need to place its thumb on the scales, as was done in the case of this report. The Minister may disagree with some criticisms of the approach, but many people will think it is reasonable to ask whether a report that was intended to inform public policy should have examined the benefits and the trade-offs associated with further data centre growth. It is very cl…

I wish to raise an issue which I know is causing concern for the thousands of households across Ireland that have invested in solar panels and have embraced the transition to clean energy. Recent media reports have suggested the clean export guarantee, the payment introduced by the Green Party and received by households for excess renewable energy exported back to the grid, could be weakened, reduced or ultimately phased out entirely in the years ahead. The clean export guarantee recognises a really simple principl…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit. I am not sure if the response from the Department is going to give a huge amount of reassurance. Ireland's energy transition depends on public participation and the success of microgeneration has shown that people are willing to invest their own resources to support climate action when the policy framework is clear and fair. Many people have pointed out their concerns at the pace at which their feed-in tariff is diminishing at exactly the time that the retail cost of electricity…

Today is 17 September and no climate action plan for 2026 has been published. I ask for an update on when the Minister will publish the climate action plan for this year or if he plans to publish one this year.

It is 17 September and there is still no climate action plan for 2026. The idea behind the climate action plan was that on the one hand we have the five-year carbon budgets making the big economy-wide changes but on the other hand we had to have accountability for what was being done on an annual basis. Those of us in the Opposition, environmental NGOs and the public need to see on an annual basis if the Government is actually passing the measures and implementing the steps that will make those big five-year econom…

I will say at the outset that it is good we finally have this Bill before the House. We have been waiting for it for a while now. A number of its provisions represent real common-sense reforms. They look at the modernisation of the national vehicle and driver file, the removal of outdated paper motor tax discs, improvements to collision data sharing, which I will speak more about, and measures designed to strengthen road safety enforcement and planning. These are all positive, but we have to understand this Bill is…

We need to have a debate on the hikes in public transport fares that were announced in the last two weeks. The Minister for Transport needs to explain why he thinks it is acceptable, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, for fares for bus and train users to be raised by an average of 15%. These fare rises do not have to happen. An extra €70 million invested in the National Transport Authority, NTA, this year would ensure it does not have to go through. This is a political call by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and i…

The Dáil is sitting today to recognise the exceptional nature of the cost-of-living crisis being experienced by people all over our country. This crisis is driven by the increase in the cost of fossil fuels. Yet, in the measures being voted on today, there is not one proposal that will give long-term protection to Irish families from the international volatility in the cost of oil and gas. A huge investment of public money, €750 million, and not one cent of that will provide energy security in Irish homes. Last Apr…

Fingal County Council is currently doing a consultation on a plan to build a new suburb for Dublin at Dunsink. The proposal is for up to 18,000 new homes, most of which will be built on State-owned land, which will I hope will mean more affordable prices. Fingal County Council plans to build the first 2,500 by 2029. Central to the success of this project is new public transport, with an extension of the Luas green line from Broombridge out as far as Tyrrelstown, which would see three new stops across the Dunsink la…

It has been useful to have this series of debates about the possibility of unification and its implications for all parts of the island in the context of the discussion and debate of the Sinn Féin Green Paper last week and the debate we are having now. These dialogues are important as they allow us to discuss the real opportunities that unification can create. They allow us to also be honest about the challenges that will emerge from unification and to be realistic about the significant political distance that stil…

I thank Deputy Sherlock for drafting and bringing forward this legislation. The Green Party has long pushed for household waste collection to be brought back under public control. This proposal is a good example of how we might do this without maybe opting for full remunicipalisation and the risks that could entail in respect of the burden it could place on local authorities. Waste collection needs to be seen as a public service that needs to be fully integrated into our circular economy frameworks. This Bill would…

I want to raise the issue of reforming the existing tax saver commuter ticket to include shared mobility services and to recognise new work patterns like working from home, as has been proposed by several service providers. As the Minister of State knows, shared mobility is shared bikes, e-bikes and e-car share services that people can rent when they need them. It complements rather than replaces existing public transport by providing flexible transport options that connect people to destinations that fixed public …

I think we can all agree that commuting patterns have changed a lot since the Covid-19 pandemic and that idea of the rigid, five-day, ten-journey commute along the same route every day has disappeared for many workers. The tax saver scheme needs to change to reflect that new reality. Commuters want something that is more flexible, to reflect the fact that they are commuting in less regular patterns, but also to reflect the increased desire for multi-modal journeys. The idea of a flexible tax saver ticket that inclu…

I thank Deputy Kenny for bringing forward this really important motion, which addresses many of the concerns parents in my constituency are raising with me regarding the increasing back-to-school costs they face each year. I want to hone in on one of the biggest issues with school costs, which is the cost of increasingly mandatory ICT equipment for students. Something I was really pleased to see during the term of office of the previous Government was the roll-out of free schoolbooks. That made a big difference for…

There has been rightful focus on road safety over the past week in the context of discussions on illegal use of scrambler bikes and the dangerous use of e-scooters. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, are due to make significant decisions about new laws soon. The Road Safety Authority estimates that about 5% of the adult population uses e-scoters. That is tens of thousands who use these devices, mainly as part of the work commute. We have rightly focused on the bad and dangerous be…