My thanks to Sinn Féin for tabling this motion on the cost of motoring, which is a serious cost for people. At the outset, I want to lay my cards on the table. As transport spokesperson for the Labour Party, I will always advocate for public transport and active travel ahead of private cars. I am of the view that we should do everything we can to encourage people to use greener, more sustainable modes of transport. That means making sure the option to travel by bus or rail or to cycle is available for everyone, wherever they may be going. The unfortunate reality is that we are obviously not there yet. There are a host of reasons that people remain reliant on their cars, including accessibility, and the fact that successive Governments invested in roads and ripped up railways across the country over decades. In some parts of the country, it remains a fact that public and active travel infrastructure is virtually non-existent. It is no surprise that we find ourselves here. There have been improvements in recent years, like the 90-minute fare and the expansion of Local Link routes, but much more is needed to get us to a place where public transport is the preferred option for most people. I am not suggesting that every journey can or should be made on public transport. I use a car, but I recognise that some journeys are just prohibitively difficult to make on public transport or on a bike. Wherever possible, we should encourage and, more importantly, enable people to use public transport, to walk or to cycle. Unfortunately, that is aspirational for now. I recognise that for many people private car use is their only feasible option a lot of the time. Across the country, the cost of getting from A to B has become a genuine source of stress for many households, workers, small businesses and communities, particularly those in rural Ireland. This is as much an issue of economic fairness and social inclusion as anything else. It demands a response that protects working people today while preparing for a sustainable and affordable transport system into the future. Motorists have faced sharp cost increases over recent years. The average motor insurance premium rose by approximately 9% in 2024 according to the CSO following a period of relative stability, as the Minister of State mentioned. According to AA Ireland, the average annual cost of running a car in 2024 was about €11,500, an increase of nearly 8% on the previous year that was driven largely by higher fuel, insurance and maintenance costs. Petrol and diesel prices in Ireland continue to rank among the highest in the EU. As of last month, petrol averaged €1.86 per litre compared with an EU average of €1.72 and diesel cost €1.79 per litre compared with an EU average of €1.66. Rural drivers who often have to rely on cars due to the lack of viable public transport can easily spend upwards of €100 a week just commuting to work. These costs need to be addressed responsibly. As the motion notes, there are 11 toll roads in operation here. Eight of these are run on the basis of public-private partnership arrangements. Some of those contracts, particularly those signed in the early 2000s, were seemingly poorly negotiated and excessively generous to private operators. Most of those deals were signed by Fianna Fáil-led Governments between 1997 and 2008. The legacy of those gold-plated public-private partnerships has left us with inflexible contracts and traffic guarantee clauses that mean the State sometimes compensates private companies when fewer cars use their roads. That is an outrage. The Labour Party has long argued for greater transparency in respect of public-private partnerships and a move back towards public ownership of critical transport infrastructure. Where profits are excessive and clauses allow tolls to rise automatically every January, every legal and financial tool must be used to renegotiate the contracts involved. TII estimates that road tolls raise around €400 million annually. Much of that revenue goes into the maintenance and financing of national roads, but much also does not. It goes into the pockets of private operators that have already made a healthy return on their investment if they are involved in financing the construction of whatever road it is. I am not against tolls in principle as long as they go towards maintenance of our roads and making them safer. The proliferation of bigger and heavier vehicles like SUVs on our roads do more damage to roads and pavements than smaller, lighter vehicles of previous decades so more maintenance of our roads is needed these days. I have an issue with increasing tolls in order to bump up the profits of operators. People have better things to do with their money in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis than handing it over to some private investment vehicle. The motion also points to the fact that paying motor tax in instalments is more expensive than paying it in a single lump sum. For example, a driver paying an annual tax of €390 will pay around €410 if he or she chooses to pay quarterly. That is a surcharge of more than 5% and it disproportionately penalises lower income motorists who cannot afford to pay the lump sum. This is a simple matter of fairness. The Labour Party has been calling for reform of this unfair system for years. We proposed in 2023 that motor tax instalment surcharges be abolished or at least reduced to a purely administrative cost, estimated at less than 1%. The system, as it stands, is obviously regressive. Nobody should pay more simply because they cannot pay it all at once. Motor insurance remains one of the great frustrations of Irish life. After the 2021 introduction of the new personal injury guidelines, average claim costs fell by almost 40%. However, as the Central Bank's 2024 report on the insurance sector shows, premium reductions averaged only 5% to 6%. Insurance companies here have enjoyed profit margins of 10% to 12%, which are far above the European norm of 5% to 6%. The gap between the two represents hundreds of millions of euro in excess profit extracted from motorists who were promised lower premiums in return for legal reforms. It is long past time that the Government stood up to the insurance industry, as my colleague Deputy Nash has called on it to do. We need a windfall levy on excess insurance profits where they exceed normal competitive returns. I also note the Labour Party's support for Sinn Féin's Judicial Council (Amendment) Bill, which is mentioned in the motion, as a means of ensuring that judicial reforms translate into actual savings for consumers. Where the Labour Party and I diverge from the motion is on the issue of carbon tax. This is the second Sinn Féin motion I have spoken on to which I have not been able to give my full support because of the position taken on carbon tax. The Labour Party supports a just transition, not a punitive one. That is why we fought successfully for carbon tax revenue to be fully ring-fenced, with at least €500 million per year now directed towards energy efficiency, retrofitting, fuel poverty alleviation and rural transport initiatives. In budget 2025, €230 million from the carbon tax was allocated to the warmer homes scheme and retrofitting supports for low-income households, €100 million went to fuel allowance top-ups and social protection measures and €80 million was invested in rural bus and cycle infrastructure. If carbon tax increases were to be reversed, as the motion proposes, those funds would also be removed. This is money that directly supports the very people who are struggling the most. Carbon tax currently adds about 2.5 cent per litre to the price of petrol and diesel. That is equivalent to roughly €1.25 per 50-litre fill. That is not an insignificant amount, but it is certainly not the primary driver of record fuel prices. Global oil markets, refinery capacity and currency fluctuations are far more influential. I cannot support a blanket reversal in respect of carbon tax. Instead, I encourage the Government and other parties to take on board the Labour Party's proposal for a refundable carbon tax credit for low- and middle-income households. This would enable us to protect those struggling with costs while making the big polluters pay their fair share and ensuring that the tax is progressive in outcome, not regressive in effect. Climate action must be socially just but abandoning a polluter pays principle in climate policy altogether would harm both the environment and the very people we aim to protect. To return to the issue of public transport and active travel, for too many people, a car is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Motoring has become expensive because there has been underinvestment in alternatives for decades. Over 64% of daily journeys in Ireland are made by private car. In rural areas, that figure rises to 80%, yet one third of rural households still have no access to public transport. That is a policy failure. The long-term solution to high motoring costs has to be a reduction in car dependence. We can do that through continued investment in rural bus networks under Connecting Ireland. There has been good progress in recent years with the roll-out of Local Link routes. We need to build on this. We should also continue to build on the reduced fares introduced in 2022 and deliver safe cycling and walking infrastructure, particularly in commuter towns. Even talking about private car use from a sustainability perspective, we need greater investment in electric vehicle charging networks, in supports for used EV purchases and in making clean transport accessible to ordinary households. We also have to do better on the roll-out of new public transport initiatives. For example, in the context of the launch of phase 7 of the BusConnects programme a few weeks ago, many of the new routes serve my constituency of Dublin South-West. I have been inundated with complaints from constituents regarding the new F routes, be it in the context of ghost buses, cancellations or longer commute times into work. On the F1 route, it is taking between 20 to 30 minutes longer for some people to get into town from Tallaght. A public petition has been launched in my area requesting a rethink of the route. To be clear, I support BusConnects. The goal of improving interconnectivity is laudable. However, we are seeing a situation arise in the context of certain routes whereby public confidence is being undermined. We have also seen recurring problems on the S6 and S8 routes since they were launched. Frequent cancellations and breakdowns were happening earlier in the year. At that time, Go-Ahead, which operates the routes, blamed this on a lack of mechanics. However, the same issues have started to rear their heads again in the past couple of weeks. Will the Minister of State and the NTA engage meaningfully when my constituents contact them about these issues instead of issuing pro forma responses the whole time? My area has long been poorly served by public transport. In the long term, we want to see the MetroLink being built. We welcome the fact that planning permission for that project has been granted. We want to see MetroLink extended to Dublin South-West. For now, however, we are dependent on buses that can be caught up in traffic. It is vitally important that people can rely on public transport, that buses are prioritised on our roads and that fares are kept low.

Sentiment score: 0.14