 Gweithio, ein bod wedi bod yn ymddangos i gael ddatblygu'r ysgolwyddon sy'n cael ei wneud o'r sgolwyddon yn ei byw. Ac mae'n defnyddio'r ysgolwyddon o'r ffrindiau ei ddesig o'r ffordd, ac mae'n ddweud o'r ffordd o'r ysgolwyddon yn ymddangos i ddweud o'r oeddau ydw i'r cyfnodol yn ddweudio'r clywed o'r llei. Ysgolwyddon yma yn ddweud o'r ddweud i'r ddeu gyffredigol yn ymgyrcholwyddon, yn rydyn i wneud maen nhw'n dilyn ni i gynnig iawn i'ch gymryd ymddangosau cymdeithasol hynhygoel a'i'n mythdoed yn gallu iawn i'ch gondol yma, i'ch wneud i'ch byw gyngorol beth ond am y bwyllai a'ch oedd o gofynnodd cyfrionnol i'r cyfrannu lleoliog feddwl, i'ch ddysgol yn dweud o'r cyfrannu lleoliog. Rhywodol wedi'u gweithio'rjm er amlwg, mae'r cyfrannu, a dyna'r ysgolion gyda'r ysgolion gyda'r northgrath George's Street i'w ddweud yn y cyfrifio. Mae'r cyfrifio'r gael, wrth gwrs, y dyfodol y riliogatio'r perthynau i gyfrifio'r ffordd yn y ffwrdd yn y dyfodol. First, a fawr maes o'r llyfr i gyfrifio'r ysgolion gyda'r ysgolion. I will begin with a short context setting for our current transport policy and in particular what we refer to as smarter travel. Secondly then a look at the impact that the fiscal crisis has had on our policy. Thirdly I want to focus in particular on the key role of vehicle technology in delivering the emission reductions that we need in transport and finally I am going to try and place smarter travel in the context of wider government policies across various sectors. So to begin with the background context to smarter travel and current transport policy. Well smarter travel is the title of the Sustainable Transport Policy for Ireland which was published by the previous government in 2009. While some of its key proposals are now on hold because the money for the necessary investment is simply not available in current circumstances. The underlying principles had broad acceptance right across the political spectrum and are also to be found in the current programme for government. Now as a mere civil servant I am going to steer very carefully clear of the political debate on what priority we should be giving to enshrining emission reductions in domestic legislation but a factual position that should be borne in mind is that our emission reduction targets do actually already have the force of law. The bottom line is that our reduction targets for overall national emissions are binding under EU law irrespective of whether and when the world as a whole agrees on new targets and there are very very punitive potential sanctions for Ireland if we fail to meet those reduction targets and as will have been very clear to you from what you've heard so far today we have very little chance of achieving those reductions in the medium term if we don't deliver a significant reduction in transport emissions. This has been masked a little bit by the economic downturn because transport emissions have traditionally been very closely coupled with economic activity but when economic growth resumes so too will the growth in transport emissions unless technological change and our policies result in a new trajectory. Now the first presentation of the afternoon after lunch may not be the best time to look at statistics so I limit myself to a few key ones. The transport sector is the third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland at 19% of the national total in 2010 but as everybody here is aware and was highlighted in Laura's presentation this morning the more significant percentage is transport share in our emissions outside the emission trading sector since that from now on is what will provide the basis on which our national performance will be assessed. The emission trading sector will look after itself and Brussels will look after it we have to look after the non trading sector. Transport share in the non trading sector in 2010 was a little over 26%. CO2 emissions from transport were on a growth trajectory over the period 1990 to 2007 increasing by 156% in that period with the road freight sector accounting for over 23% of transport CO2 emissions in 2007 while the private car contributed over 37%. Now since then the years 2008 to 2010 saw significant reductions in transport emissions but mainly due to the economic downturn with freight activity in particular being very much reduced over the period. Specific policy measures taken to address demand and to encourage energy efficient vehicle purchasing patterns have also had some effect so greenhouse gas emissions for the transport sector in 2010 were down to 11.61 megatons from a peak of 14.29 in 2007 and that's a drop of 19% however the 2010 figure is still 127% higher than that of 1990. From 1996 to 2006 road freight vehicle kilometres increased by 115% they've since fallen by over 40% from that figure but the vast majority of that is due to the reduction of that reduction is due to the downturn in the construction sector with much lesser reductions in vehicle kilometres in other sectors of the economy. Ireland's plans for economic recovery include a concerted effort at building further on our exports and not just in agri food. With this in mind it's interesting to note that the value of exports returned to pre-recession levels by 2010 and increased further by from 89 billion to 93 billion in 2011. A growing export-led economy is likely to see an increase in freight emissions. The number of private cars per thousand adults while it increased by 73% over the period from 1990 to 2009 is still below the EU-15 and UK averages so undoubtedly there's potential growth there as well. In other words there's absolutely no doubt that the underlying trend in transport emissions will return to growth unless there is a shift change. The good news is that the combined effect of technological change and policy development can bring about the shift change that we need. I'm just going to look quickly at what the Department of Transport as it was at the time set out to do in smarter travel. The purpose of smarter travel was to provide a plan to make Ireland's transport system sustainable by 2020 and it contained a total of 49 measures which can be broadly grouped under four key headings. Firstly there were actions to reduce the distance travelled by private car and encourage smarter travel and these include focusing population and employment growth predominantly in larger urban areas. This entails the development of better and workable linkages between the spatial and physical planning systems and the transport agenda aiming for a future in which investment in new public facilities such as schools, community centres, health centres, amenities and so on take account of the need for access without reliance on the car. Secondly, there were actions to improve access to alternatives to the private car through the availability of better public transport links and routes that are cycle and walking friendly. Smarter travel in particular committed to intensive action to make cycling a popular travel mode publishing Ireland's first ever national cycling policy which laid out actions to achieve by 2020 a five fold increase in cycling's modal share and I should acknowledge the attendance here this afternoon of Ciaran Cofu in his time as Minister of State at the Department of Transport was particularly active in pushing the sustainable transport agenda and in particular the cycling agenda. Actions to improve pedestrians experiences of streets and public spaces were also part of the policy. The third heading encompassed actions aimed at improving the fuel efficiency and environmental performance of motorised transport through improved fleet structures, energy efficient driving and alternative technologies and I'm going to come back to that one in a bit of detail in a moment. Finally, the strategy recognised that a lot of the things it wanted to do could not have been delivered under the existing institution arrangements at the time so the fourth broad action heading related to improving governance arrangements. But then of course we had a blip, a rather large one. The strategy was published in 2009 just as the full horror of what was about to befall the economy and the public finances was beginning to emerge. And since then we have of course had a massive contraction in the public finances. The new government's medium term expenditure framework which was published last autumn has provided greater clarity about the spending profile that transport now has for the next five years and investment in sustainable travel has inevitably been less than was originally envisaged when the smarter travel policy was published. However the government has still prioritised investment in this area and over the period from this year to 2016 close to one and a half billion will be invested in sustainable travel including public transport. Now to put that in some context when the document was published in 2009 it was estimated that some four and a half billion euro would be required if the policy was to be implemented in full by 2020 and that didn't count the cost of investment in major new public transport infrastructures such as Metro North or the Dart Interconnector which were going to be largely delivered by the private sector under PPP arrangements. About two billion of the projected smarter travel budget was for implementation of the national cycle policy framework with the bulk of the remainder to go on improvements to bus transport. So the funding now available to us both for public transport investment and other sustainable travel policies is hugely reduced from what was initially planned. However within those reduced resources funding has been prioritised to ensure the maintenance of existing infrastructure and to advance a small number of projects which can add value to the existing network. Now as everybody knows the larger big ticket items such as Metro North and the Dart Interconnector have been postponed for consideration in advance of the next capital programme which will be drawn up in 2015. Sadly there is no PPP market at the moment. There is no possibility of large PPP projects being funded by the private sector in Ireland and as both of those projects were reliant on the PPP markets as well as some extra expenditure there was no possibility of there going ahead until the overall confidence in the Irish economy improves. So funding is now focused on delivering improvements to the existing public transport network through maintaining existing infrastructure, removing bottlenecks and pinch points and providing better passenger information and some limited and targeted improvements to the network are possible. Two recent examples of this new targeted funding are the integrated ticketing project in the Greater Dublin area, long promised and long in development but now here and the expansion of real-time passenger information. If I had a penny for every person who has told me over the last three or six months the difference that the real-time passenger information has made to their inclination to possibly put their hand out and get a bus I would have quite a few pennies. Not enough to pay for Metro North or Dart Underground but I would certainly be quite comfortable. A national web-based journey planner is also being developed by the NTA. Any new public transport infrastructure investment is going towards the integration of the system that we already have and of course the remaining big ticket or medium ticket item in that is the Lewis BXD which is going to join up the two Lewis lines and extend it out to connect with the Manuth rail line at Broomebridge. That subject to planning of course should commence in late 2014 or early 2015 if and are possibly earlier. Progress is still being made although slower than originally anticipated on the remainder of smarter travel. In 2009 the Department of Transport established the National Sustainable Travel Office and stronger working arrangements with the local authorities were also established through the launch of the local authorities sustainable travel officer network. In 2010 the national transport authority came into effect and among other things was given responsibility to improve the linkages between transport and planning and to develop a transport strategy for the greater Dublin area. This represents the first step in delivering a key commitment of smarter travel which is to integrate land use and transport planning seeking to establish the GDA transport networks services and the supporting transport policies that will support the regional planning guidelines for the area. However planning improvements though hugely important to how we manage transport policy are unlikely to have a huge effect on transport and travel trends in the very short term and will only have medium term impacts on transport emissions so they are not likely to have a huge impact on our 2020 emission reduction targets. We have also made progress on other smarter travel initiatives including cycle lanes and pedestrianisation projects. Just to take one example that some of you may be familiar with the Grand Canal premium cycle route in Dublin is an example of how high quality provision can still be made for sustainable travel modes despite a reduced budget. A smarter travel demonstration projects fund invested three million nationally on sustainable travel projects. We are looking at models to assess how the very successful Dublin bike scheme could be extended to some of the regional cities. The smarter travel areas programme which was originally budgeted for 50 million euro has been launched this year albeit in a reduced manner and that's providing 23 million euro for three local authorities who are selected from a competition, Limerick Dungarven and Westport over the next five years and the idea is that this investment in each of those areas will transform the local transport systems to support sustainable travel patterns and serve as demonstrations for the other towns and cities in terms of what's possible. A full evaluation of the lessons that are learned from these areas will ensure that key policy information on what works in Irish sustainable travel can be rolled out on a more systematic basis once the fiscal conditions improve. Funding calls have also recently gone out to the local authorities for national cycle network projects which will connect the main towns in Ireland through high quality off-road cycleways and for active travel towns focusing on promoting walking and cycling regional towns in Ireland. The National Transport Authority is also providing funding for sustainable travel for all of the authorities in the GDA at a rate of three million per year per authority and also in the regional cities. So there is a lot going on to a certain extent under the radar but it is going on and a key element of all of this funding and of all current and future funding will be proper monitoring and evaluation of the investment so that knowledge is gained and improved on value for money so that we can better target the more limited resources that we're now working with. I promise I'd come back to technology and as I will make clear, this in my view is how the game is going to be won. I mentioned earlier that we have seen a significant reduction in transport emissions in the last three, four years. Not all of that is due to the recession. Actually apart from construction freight, vehicle kilometres elsewhere are pretty consistent with what they were in the boom time. This gives us an indication that a society's travel patterns are relatively difficult to change and they're not that responsive to changes in personal financial circumstances. Travel behaviour tends to be relatively ingrained and it takes a lot of effort in policy terms to shift. What has made a significant contribution to transport emissions is the impact of the CO2-based VRT and motor tax regime, encouraging the purchase of more fuel-efficient vehicles in conjunction with the CO2 from cars directive which was negotiated and agreed at EU level. The objective of that directive is to reduce vehicle fleet emissions to an average of 130 grams per kilometre by 2012 and 95 grams by 2020. We have seen in Ireland a dramatic reduction in CO2 emissions across all car models. I gather that there is a particular model. It's a Ford Mondeo 1.6 litres, I'm told. The current version on sale is available with emission levels of 114 grams per kilometre. The exact same model in 2008 had over 170 grams per kilometre. So that's a reduction of around, if my arithmetic is right, almost exactly one third in the same model over three years as a response to what the punter wants essentially and the punter wants it because the tax system encourages the punter to get the lower emissions car. People don't necessarily want to drive very small cars, they do want to drive cars that have low emissions and as you know there are one or two brands which will be regarded I suppose as premium brands have actually exploited that extremely successfully over the last couple of years. The range of cars coming on the market at sub 100 grams per kilometre is increasing dramatically. The average specific emissions from new cars purchased in Ireland in 2007 was 164 grams per kilometre. Three years later in 2010, 133. I'm not now talking about pulling out the best example, I'm talking about the average across all new cars purchased. Very very dramatic reduction, which of course feeds immediately into transport emissions. With each successive year the average emission level of the national fleet is reducing substantially and of course as older vehicles get scrapped and replaced by much lower emission vehicles that are now being bought, this is a continual process so it's having and will continue to have a huge impact on national transport emissions. The potential contribution of electric vehicles shouldn't be discounted and we we heard Sarah being extremely upbeat about it this morning and I look forward to hearing Paul Mulvaney's update on how that project is progressing. Similarly the biofuels obligation of 4% biofuel mix has directly reduced emissions from transport by this equivalent and of course the increasing price of fuel including the carbon tax element will also have an impact. The big impacts on our emissions come from tax measures and technological improvements. For everything that I have said about all of the things that we are trying to do under smarter travel in terms of changing behaviour, there is nothing other than tax and technological improvement that will have a huge impact on transport carbon emissions. Taken together all of the items have a not insignificant potential but once the emissions from the vehicle, once those reductions are locked in the remaining potential lies across a range of policy measures that will all deliver small amounts rather than any big ticket items that can solve our problem and those abatement options in many cases are costly and difficult to lever because changing ingrain travel behaviour across the population does not happen quickly and that of course is where we need to weigh up the marginal costs of the potential reductions and compare them with the marginal cost of policy interventions across other sectors and that's where I part company with a view that's often expressed although actually I haven't heard it expressed here today that that transport or any other sector should simply be given an overall sectoral target for emission reductions. I have a strong belief that as an economy we need to find the overall mix of reduction measures that will enable us to meet our national target at the least overall cost. Just coming towards the end now I just want to finish by putting the question of transport policy into a wider context. Long term one of the most important elements of delivering a sustainable transport system in Ireland will be ensuring that proper planning processes are repelled. In the short to medium term smarter travel is a broad range of policy instruments. There is a range of reasons for pursuing those policies and emission reductions is only one of the reasons. Benefits through reducing congestion, through improving the health of the nation, particularly the health of our children, through improving quality of life, improving productivity, making public spaces more attractive, all of those are outcomes of smarter travel policies as well as emission benefits. Smarter travel policies on increasing walking and cycling and public transport are not likely to give huge benefits in reducing emissions in Ireland given our dispersed population and our associated travel patterns. Particularly if we're talking about regular journeys such as commutes because generally it's shorter journeys where the greatest potential exists to switch modes but short journeys in general are not the problem for Irish transport emissions. Just to give some examples, a significant public transport investment such as delivering metro north would be likely only to deliver a reduction of about 40,000 tonnes per annum and this would equate only to about 0.2% of transport emissions. So emission benefits alone don't justify public transport investment in city regions. The benefits are to be seen in all the other things, the reduced congestion, the value of time savings with emission reductions aside benefit. Similarly you can't justify investment in cycling solely on the basis of emission reductions. Again emission reductions are a co-benefit rather than the main objective and an example of this would be that if an additional 5% of all journeys per annum switched to cycling with an average distance of five kilometres the equivalent reduction in car emissions will be in the region of 100,000 tonnes per annum and that's only about 0.5% of emissions. So the point that I'm making and I want to be very very clear about what I'm not saying by the way, I'm not saying that because all of these things will not deliver huge reductions in emissions we shouldn't do them and I hope nobody in the room has taken that interpretation because I mean quite the reverse. I'm saying that all of these things should be done because they give us a better future by all sorts of different measures but they won't solve our climate problem on their own. Further cuts in emissions can and will be delivered in the transport sector through implementing a whole range of policies that will deliver small reductions together aggregating to a significant level of abatement and giving us all of these other benefits as well and for those reasons we'll continue to deliver as much of smarter travel as we possibly can in current circumstances and when the economy and the public finances improve we'll be making the strongest possible case for the resources needed so we can start making serious investment in in those areas once again but it will be technological change on which we are a taker because we don't make cars in Ireland but we're fortunate to be members of the EU where there is a very very strong set of of EU legislation focused on driving down car emissions. All that's left for us to do is to make sure that we continue to maintain the fiscal structure that we have at the moment which supports the choice of people buying low emission vehicles and if we continue on all of those tracks we will achieve over time the reductions in transport emissions that we need to. Thanks very much.