“Anti-carbon, not anti-car” is “nice soundbite” but without plan, it’s an “excuse to invest in roads”

Taoiseach Simon Harris’s comments that the Government was “Anti-carbon, not anti-car” is “nice soundbite” but without a plan to decarbonise transport, it’s just an “excuse to invest in roads”, a leading academic focused on decarbonisation has said.

The Taoiseach’s widely reported comments were in response to questioning from journalists at the opening of a new Garda station. The Irish Independent newspaper reported that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil joined forces to block what was branded the “Green Party’s ‘ridiculous’ pollution tax on drivers” just before the election.

The dispute is over the high-level report Moving Together: A Strategic Approach to the Improved Efficiency of the Transport System in Ireland. The Greens want the document finalised before the impending election, but their Government partners are resisting it. It would not directly bring in taxes or charges.

The comments were also made against the backdrop of negative media framing of the Green Party trying to get the Government to stick to the 2:1 spending rule in favour of public transport over new road projects.

The Irish Daily Mail reported the story complaining that €7m of an underspend in greenways was not redirected to roads. The article was repeated in full online by businessplus.ie, which is owned by the Mail’s media group, and repeated in part elsewhere included in PA news agency reports.

The Mail quoted an anonymous Fianna Fáil minister as having said the 2:1 spending rule “will not survive” future Programme for Government negotiations.

The unnamed Government minister said Fianna Fáil members “will be alert to policies like this second time around, so it simply won’t survive the Programme for Government talks”, but insisted that they were in favour of investing in public transport and active travel. Former Green Party leader and transport Minister Eamon Ryan has said the delivery of public transport projects will suffer if the rule is removed.

The media focus comes as the death toll from flooding in Spain — which researchers said was worsened by climate change — has been confirmed to be at least 214 people.

Hannah Daly, Professor of Sustainable Energy at University College Cork, said: “Saying you’re against carbon, not cars, is a nice soundbite from the Taoiseach, but without a serious plan to cut emissions from transport, it is just a vacuous excuse to continue investing in roads.”

Daly was also a member of the Climate Change Advisory Council’s Carbon Budgets Working Group.

“Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael blocked a Green Party strategy for addressing greenhouse gas emissions from transport, showing why every political party needs to be grilled on their plan for bringing emissions in each sector in line with carbon budgets,” she said.

She added: “It is not enough for them to support climate action in principle — ‘the planet is on fire’, as Taoiseach Simon Harris says. They need to explicitly lay out their planned policy measures to ensure each sector cuts emissions rapidly and immediately.”

Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris was quoted as having said: “I signed up for a Programme for Government that was anti-carbon, not anti-car.”

“I think it’s very important that we recognise that there is still a need for cars in this country, and many people will have switched to electric vehicles. They need roads to drive on. Our public transport needs good road infrastructure as well,” he said.

He said he did not believe that the Government had a “mandate at this stage” for new charges and taxes but added: “Any governments that I’m a part of won’t progress things around tolls and congestion charges.”