An overview of all parties’ manifestos — with a focus on sustainable transport — can be found here.
Below are the transport-related mentions which were used to form the overview. It is provided here not as a review but as an accessible record of the transport commitments. For any formatting etc issues, please refer to the PDF version linked to (in the party name) below.
The Green Party’s manifesto runs to 92 pages. In it, there are 3,450 words related to transport.
Links to other pages:
| Overview with parties compared |
| Fianna Fáil |
| Sinn Féin |
| Fine Gael |
| Social Democrats |
| Labour |
| PBP |
In an overview of transport, the Green Party outlines:
Moving away from a car-dominated system brings numerous benefits. In addition to reducing emissions, it protects lives and health, lowers the cost of living, makes room for affordable housing and improves quality of life.
While transport emissions reductions are hard to achieve with a growing population and economy, we have had some important successes.
Thanks to fare reductions of 60% for young people and 20% for everyone else, public transport use has rebounded quickly after the pandemic. One million people are now taking public transport every day in Ireland, and passenger numbers on rural public transport services have increased fourfold. As we set out in chapter 7, we will make progress towards our 2030 climate targets in transport by:
- Invest half of the Apple tax case money in major public transport projects in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford.
- Further supporting public transport use for commuting by reforming the tax-saver ticket into a new Climate Ticket.
- Providing low-cost loans and better targeting grants that support the purchase of electric vehicles.
- Investing €500 million a year in walking and cycling infrastructure.
- Making walking and cycling safer by reducing speed limits and improving enforcement of road traffic laws.
- Reducing people’s need to drive by planning for new housing developments to be situated near centres of employment and education, and near public transport links.
- Taxing business class flights and private jets.
In its main section on transport, the party states:
Over the last four years, we have made significant progress in moving towards a clean, safe, and modern transport system. Supported by fare reductions of 60% for young people and 20% for everyone else, the number of people using public transport has reached one million per day. We have invested in safe cycling and walking like never before, the Metro has been submitted to An Bord Pleanála, BusConnects is being designed and progressed in every city, Cork commuter rail is underway, and the Shannon-Foynes line is being reopened as the start of a revival of rail freight on our lines.
However, it was always intended that our switch to a more modern and sustainable transport system would be a ten-year project. Only a Green Minister for Transport can be trusted to oversee the delivery of this vision in the next five years. We need to keep going green so we cut our greenhouse gas emissions, resolve the gridlock that a car dependent transport system brings, and create a more efficient way of us all moving around.
While we have delivered a dramatic increase in funding for public transport and walking and cycling infrastructure, we know that we need to go further if we’re going to meet our targets on climate, housing and balanced regional development. We estimate that an additional €10 billion will be needed for public transport between now and the end of 2030. We propose that €7 billion of that should come from the Apple corporate tax lump sum with the remainder coming from the next revision of the National Development Plan.
A green take on transport:
We will make the switch to a sustainable transport system by making it easier, safer, and more comfortable for people to walk, cycle and take public transport. Where people need to use a car, we will scale up supports for them to access electric vehicles. This support will be tailored to provide the greatest level of assistance to low-income households.
Public Transport
This will be a pivotal Government for public transport in Ireland. With the wrong party in Government many of these projects will be delayed or postponed. The Green Party will prioritise spending on public transport by allocating half of the Apple tax case funds for this purpose.
Dublin
In Dublin we will:
- Complete the introduction of a new city centre traffic management plan that has already started along the quays, transforming the environment right across the city centre.
- Over the lifetime of the next Government, complete the roll out of the new Dublin BusConnects network. This will involve building the 12 quality bus corridors that are now emerging from planning and further advancing the cycle and greenway network that will transform the city. There is no reason why we cannot follow the examples of cities in the Netherlands, Denmark and France, which are showing how urban mobility in less car-dominated cities can work.
- Start the construction of Dublin Metro, the Luas to Finglas and the DART+ programme, including an extension to Wicklow town which will see the tripling of the carrying capacity of the DART fleet. We will progress a new rail line to Navan and design the other Luas extensions we will need to Lucan, Poolbeg and Bray.
Cork
In Cork we have already started this radical change by investing in a new passing loop around Kent station and widening the old Cobh line so we can build six new train stations on the north side of the city and run new battery electric carriages between Mallow and Midleton, allowing services to come fast and frequently.
We have designed the BusConnects system for Cork and it too must be delivered by the next Government, along with the new light rail line from Mahon to Ballincollig, which will transform the city.
Wateford
In Waterford we have already started the transformation by moving Plunkett station down to the north quays and building a new sustainable transport bridge over the River Suir.
Our vision is to build a new metropolitan rail system for the south-east by reopening the rail line to Wexford and upgrading the existing lines to Limerick and Kilkenny. This will enable us to open shuttle services between Waterford and Kilkenny city and to several of the major towns in the Southeast.
Limerick
We can grow Limerick city dramatically by extending a rail line to Shannon and opening new stations in Moyross, Ballysimon, Adare, and Raheen and creating a metropolitan electric rail service that extends between, Ennis, Nenagh, Foynes, Limerick Junction and all stations in between.
Galway
We believe Galway city can best develop along public transport corridors and greenways. We will construct the first high quality bus corridor from Knocknacarra to the industrial estates to the east of the city in the next two years and begin works to construct light rail and park and ride.
At the same time, we will reopen the Western Rail Corridor and upgrade the lines from Athenry and Ennis so that we see much faster and more frequent services. This will make major new housing developments viable around Ceannt station and in areas such as Ardaun.
Towns and rural areas
Our towns and rural areas must also be at the forefront of this transition. In the lifetime of this Government, we have rolled out new town bus services in Athlone, Carlow, and Navan. New services in Mullingar and Ennis are now about to be introduced.
We will also continue the Pathfinder initiative, which has promoted 35 sustainable mobility projects right across the country and expand new integrated school and public transport bus services to help increase the frequency of rural public transport services.
Infrastructure To achieve this level of ambition, we will need to reform the system of delivery. We will:
- Ensure that every major public transport infrastructure project is fully funded, enabling it to progress without delay.
- Reform the Infrastructure Guidelines and the Public Spending Code to halve the time it takes for critical public transport projects to move from inception to construction.
- Provide strategic coherence to transport planning by transferring approving authority from Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) to the National Transport Infrastructure Authority (NTA), retaining TII as an agency purely focused on delivery.
- Extend the statutory remit of the NTA across the country and broaden the scope of Metropolitan Area Transport Strategies to include the wider region.
- Continue to invest in the basics, such as town, village, and rural bus shelters, up-todate information, coordinated schedules for smooth transfers, and lighting and agefriendly seating at bus stops.
- Invest in train and bus stations, ensuring they are accessible, clean, safe, wellmaintained, and attractive centrepieces of our towns and cities
Services
While we have succeeded in making public transport cheaper, we now need to make it work better for everyone. To do this, we will:
- Provide ring-fenced budgets to each of the transport operating companies, solely for improving reliability and punctuality. Key goals will be to eliminate ‘ghost buses’ and improve train punctuality.
- Establish a new Office for Punctuality and Reliability in the NTA to oversee improvements by providers of public transport services.
- Deliver next generation account-based ticketing across the PSO network.
People living in towns and villages nationwide should have access to reliable public transport. We will progress the ‘every village, every hour’ model, similar to the system used in Switzerland, where every village has a bus service every hour for 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
To achieve this vision, we will:
- Increase the public service obligation budget by at least 20% per year and set it on a multi-annual basis to facilitate better planning.
- Continue to deliver new Connecting Ireland and Local Link services at a rate of one per week.
- Fund a town bus and bike share schemes for all towns with a population of at least 10,000.
- Establish new late-night and early-morning bus and rail services across the country.
- Establish a dedicated Public Transport Safety Unit in An Garda Síochána (AGS), starting with routes and services where the need is greatest.
- Task the new ‘IDA for skills’ with hiring more bus drivers to allow for higher service frequency for Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann.
- As much as possible, we will ensure that public transport timetables are aligned with each other, so that bus, rail and ferry transfers are smooth and timely.
EVs
We had a good deal of success in encouraging people to switch to electric vehicles (EVs) in the first few years of this Government. However, the global EV market has slowed down, and Ireland has not been immune to this trend. This presents a challenge to our ambition to halve carbon emissions by 2030, and deprives people the opportunity to drive better, cleaner cars.
We will implement a new policy to get us back on track. It will ensure that new EVs are always cheaper than the equivalent internal combustion engine car. Specific measures will include the following:
- One of the first tasks of our new National Means Testing agency (see chapter 2) will be to scale EV grants by household income, ensuring that every household sees an increase in the grant, but that the greatest level of support is provided to lower income households.
- Extending the low-cost retrofit loan scheme to the purchase of EVs.
- Making EV grants available for smaller, cheaper electric vehicles which are commonplace in other European countries. These vehicles, which typically have a topspeed of 45kph, are a suitable option for some households in urban areas.
- Ramping up investment in charging infrastructure in our cities, towns and villages and on our motorways, including the introduction of 200 new smart mobility hubs which have integrated car and bike sharing and charging facilities.
- Facilitating vehicle-to-grid electricity transmission. Households with smart meters will be able to run their homes off the battery in their EV. This allows them to charge up on cheap night-rate electricity, or on home-grown power from rooftop solar panels, and use that cheap electricity throughout the day. One day of electricity usage will typically use less than 15% of the battery capacity of a mid-range electric vehicle.
- Introducing advertising regulations to limit greenwashing around vehicle emissions and raise awareness of alternative modes of transport.
Walking and Cycling
Wider, brighter footpaths and a joined-up, high quality cycling network are vital for road safety and for bringing a sense of life back to our streets. We will continue to invest in this infrastructure to improve air quality and reduce congestion and noise nationwide.
Specifically, we will:
- Increase investment in walking and cycling infrastructure to €500 million per year.
- Establish a new €75 million maintenance fund for cycle lanes and greenway projects with a separate annual allocation of €100 million.
- Expand local authority active travel teams to ensure they have in-house competencies in urban design, transport planning, public health, community engagement, accessibility, and construction project management.
- Establish a national league table of local authorities to measure success in delivering walking and cycling infrastructure. The most successful local authorities will receive additional funding for their transport budgets.
- Fund the design of detailed active travel network plans for all towns with a population of at least 15,000.
- Prioritise pedestrians and cyclists at traffic lights.
- Explore how we can extend the Bike-to-work scheme to those who can’t currently access it
- Expand the Safe Routes to School programme and, subject to a feasibility study, implement zero-emission zones around schools and childcare facilities.
- Expand existing bike sharing schemes and support their roll-out to all towns with a population of at least 10,000.
- Champion the introduction of annual carfree days in specific areas, towns and villages to facilitate local markets and festivals.
- Establish sustainable transport offices within the HSE, An Garda Síochána, and the Fire Services to ensure that new walking and cycling infrastructure projects align with the needs of emergency service providers.
- Support the provision of secure bike, e-bike, and non-standard parking facilities for apartment and above-the-shop living in town centres.
Road safety
Our ambition is to cut road deaths in half by 2030. We will achieve this by changing the composition of the vehicle fleet, improving infrastructure, better enforcing road safety laws, and reforming the Road Safety Authority.
We will:
- Introduce incentives for the purchase of smaller and lighter vehicles without dampening demand in the EV market, recognising that steadily increasing vehicle size has impacted on road safety,
especially for children.- Oversee the roll out of lower default speed limits.
- Fund 50 average speed cameras on national roads across the country.
- Roll out the use of camera enforcement technology at junctions.
- Examine the use of interlock breathalysers for commercial drivers who have been
caught drink-driving.- Introduce speeding fines based on a percentage of the offender’s disposable income, as is done in Finland.
- Split the Road Safety Authority into two entities, one for car and driver testing, and a new Road Safety Office for education, advocacy and research tasked with implementing a Safe Systems approach to road safety
New Roads and Road Maintenance
We will make sure that spending on new roads prioritises projects that take traffic out of our towns and urban centres and on road upgrades that improve road safety. We will also ensure that road maintenance and repair is properly funded so that local authorities are able to address the problems that more extreme weather conditions will bring.
Micro and Shared mobility
New technologies such as electric scooters are opening up new opportunities for sustainable urban mobility. We will ensure that users of these technologies and the other members of the public they interact with are kept safe through investment in safe, segregated infrastructure and the enforcement of clear and consistent regulations.
- We will support the roll out of shared mobility services and examine the extension of the new ‘Climate Ticket’ to cover shared services for bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters and electric vehicles.
- We will restore the ability to carry e-scooters on public transport once the higher standards established under the Road Traffic and Roads Act 2023 are in place.
- We will implement regulations regarding the commercial use of drones in Irish airspace, including height of flying, noise level and privacy issues.
Inclusive Transport
We will ensure that the principle of universal design is front and centre when putting new transport infrastructure in place. This will include:
- Adopting an access-for-all approach to transport and spatial planning, urban design and the built environment.
- Streamlining and improving access to mobility aids, adaptive wheelchairs and non-standard cycles for a rights-based approach to mobility independence.
- Expanding Dublin City Council’s ‘continuous footpaths’ pilot, ensuring pedestrians can move along without a drop in pavement height.
- Enforcing of disability parking rules, providing additional disabled car parking spaces, and ensuring access to towns and villages to those who need it.
International Travel
Aviation is one of the most difficult sectors of the economy to decarbonise. The development of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) will be critical to our success in this area. Biological sources of SAF come with their own land-use related challenges, so we must act now to develop a future pipeline of e-fuels.
Our airports are essential pieces of state infrastructure, connecting Ireland to the rest of the world. The passenger cap at Dublin airport was put in place by Fingal County Council because of fundamental land transport access challenges. Modelling has shown that without the Metro, we could see tailbacks of two miles were the airport to continue to grow. Ultimately this is a matter for the planning system to resolve.
We supported our regional airports through Covid and they are continuing to grow and provide valuable connectivity. Shannon and Cork airports are particularly well placed to grow substantially and provide additional capacity to the state.
We will seek to develop Shannon as the lowest carbon landing place for aviation between North America and Europe and continue to engage with Waterford Airport Board and relevant stakeholders towards further strengthening and future-proofing the business case for the airport’s development.
We will work with our neighbours to support people who want to travel abroad without flying. We will seek to establish and subsidise a single sail-rail ticket to cover entire journeys to and from continental Europe across multiple transport modes. We will work with ferry companies to ensure foot passenger access on international sailings.
Freight
Ireland has the lowest level of rail freight of any country in Europe because of the deliberate decision to run down our use of rail freight and rail more generally in recent decades. An ever-increasing number of HGVs on our roads doesn’t work for congestion, for health and for the environment.
We have begun to deliver the infrastructure required to facilitate the shift to rail freight. The rehabilitation of the Shannon-Foynes line is expected to be completed next year, facilitating new rail freight business through Waterford Port. If we are returned to Government, we will oversee a dramatic revival of rail freight in the next five years, taking vehicles off the road and bringing our emissions down.
We will:
- Support the development of the east wall marshalling yard as a freight depot in Dublin Port.
- Build marshalling yards to the west, southwest, north-west, and south-east of Dublin to facilitate a twenty-fold increase in rail freight in Ireland. • Purchase 150 new freight wagons.
- Work with Waterford Port to introduce direct sailings to Europe.
- Accelerate the electrification of road freight, by streamlining the installation of charging technology through a one-stopshop approach.
- Streamline the issuance of Irish Residence Permits and Irish Drivers Licences for HGV and bus driver work permit holders to enter the workforce more efficiently. • Pilot an urban freight and last-mile delivery plan with urban consolidation centres in towns over 15,000 in population.
- Fund a scrappage scheme to replace end-of-life Light Commercial Vehicles with e-Cargo Bikes.
Ports
Our Ports are critical for our economy and for the development of offshore renewable energy. Ambitious plans have been put in place, and we will implement them.
We will:
- Support the 3FM project in Dublin Port, recognising the need to free up space for housing by moving the new car storage area to a location outside the city. We will support the expansion of the Poolbeg nature reserve, recognising the value of Dublin Bay’s status as a UNESCO biosphere Fully support the major development of Rosslare Port for offshore renewable energy and rail freight.
- Move Tivoli docks to Ringaskiddy.
- Reopen rail freight facilities at Marino Point.
- Develop Shannon as an integral strategic hub for the development of offshore renewable energy with a view to becoming a hub for floating wind energy infrastructure.
- Support the further development of Killybegs and Rossaveel, Derry and Belfast ports.
On school transport:
Transferring responsibility for school transport from the Department of Education to the Department of Transport. We will merge the school transport scheme with the public bus network. In rural areas, we will give every primary school child living at least 1km from their school, and every secondary school child living at least 2km from their school, a seat on a bus. We will also raise the maximum age of school bus drivers beyond 70 to prevent service disruptions caused by labour shortages.
In a section on planning, the party commits to:
Better align regional and local development plans with transport, electricity grid, and water infrastructure planning.
Under the header ‘A Vibrant Nighttime Economy’, the party said:
Increase funding for policing, emergency services and nighttime public transport.
Under the header of ‘Loneliness’, the party outlines:
Build vibrant communities to prevent loneliness through sports clubs, choirs, voluntary work, and education, and expand public transport, especially in rural areas.