Minister For Climate Action – Where Is The Action On The Dart Lifts?

Ireland has become the second country in the world to declare a climate and biodiversity emergency. The move came after world- wide protests by school children including in Ireland had demanded that governments tell the truth about the need to combat climate change.

Richard Burton, Minister for Climate Action Minister, and local Dublin Bay North TD, has said: ‘Things will deteriorate very rapidly unless we move very swiftly and the window of opportunity to do that is fast closing.’

Bernard Mulvany, People Before Profit candidate in the local elections for Clontarf (picture attached) says the minister should live up to his word in his own constituency.

He said: “One obvious way of reducing carbon emissions is to ensure that people use more public transport. Yet the DART system far from being made more available to people, is being run down.

“The signs of this are evident across the constituency. At Clontarf DART station for example, access is being denied to disabled people, older people and parents with young children in buggies because the lifts are regularly out of order.”

“This week alone Tara St, Skerries, Greystones Killiney were out of order. The problem with all of these stations is that lack of staff in attendance means that the lifts are vulnerable to vandalism.

“How can we take the Minister for Climate Action seriously when one key plank of addressing climate change – the improvement of public transport – is being ignored in his own back yard?”

Bernard Mulvany, the father of a disabled child and a disability rights activist, is appalled  at the number of days this month that the local DART station lifts have not been working. 

“The Minister claims that individuals need to be encouraged to switch to environmentally neutral ways of travelling.  Disabled people, it seems, are to be left out of having the choice”.