Political parties need to set out how they will prioritise and fund transport linked to housing in regional cities in election manifestos to counterbalance overdevelopment in Dublin, Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan has said.
If construction was overly concentrated on Dublin, “the country will tip over to the east coast”, he told the Oireachtas Committee on Environment and Climate Action on Thursday.
The updated national planning framework due to be published shortly would align housing and transport more closely, he added. Scale-up in transport was already happening by building housing close to railway stations, especially on the east coast, and complemented by investment in Dart, metro and Luas services.
Waterford was becoming a model example in transport-led development, while there was similar progress in Cork and Limerick.
Prioritising transport would tackle the housing and climate crises “but all this requires considerable political commitment”, said the Minister.
Committee chairman Brian Leddin TD (Green Party) welcomed indications transport emissions had peaked in Ireland and overall emissions were decoupled from economic growth, but warned “decoupling emissions from population growth is going to be a huge challenge”.
The focus had to be on where people were going to live, he said. Enhanced regional cities with the right density of housing and rapid rail services would ensure transport emissions would not rebound, he added.
While there was spectacular growth in public transport use, “we have to throw everything at transport” because of a car-dependent system, said Mr Ryan.
Responding to Darren O’Rourke TD (Sinn Féin), he denied there were bottlenecks in the roll-out of renewable energy projects. If the first tranche of six offshore wind farms cleared planning and legal hurdles in a timely way, he was confident the Government’s five-gigawatt target by 2030 would be met. A target of 195,000 EVs on Irish roads by 2025 would be achieved while charging infrastructure was ramping up.
Lack of resourcing of An Bord Pleanála had been addressed, said Mr Ryan, though issues at local authority level needed to be looked at as some “effectively ruled themselves out of the renewable energy revolution” because of their development plans.
Asked by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy if he was concerned about Ireland’s vulnerability from escalating data centre electricity demand that was likely to be compounded by artificial intelligence requirements, Mr Ryan replied: “We all have to make sure we live with climate limits … I believe data centres can live within those limits and can bring real benefits to the country.”
Use of gas-fired power generation was not appropriate, however, and he had given clear direction to Gas Networks Ireland this was not the way to go.
