Government carbon emissions targets impossible to achieve in counties like Tipperary

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Tipperary people drive more kilometres than the national average for Ireland each year.

That’s according to the Irish Car Carbon Reduction Alliance who have deemed emissions targets that have been set as ‘unrealistic and doomed to fail’.

They say that Climate Action Plan targets are based on incomplete and innaccurate data and they fail to tackle the underlying reasons behind our high level of car emissions.

Denis Murphy is a spokesperson for the alliance:

“The European average is 12,000 kilometres. In Ireland, it’s 18,000. In Dublin it’s 14,000 but you take Tipperary and it’s just under 20,000 kilometres.

“So, if we want to address our emissions – and we’ve got to address our emissions – we have to do it by addressing what’s causing the emissions.

“The reason we have emissions greater than the European average in this country is that we drive our cars a lot.”

However, Denis, speaking on Tipp Today, went on to say he doesn’t feel huge strides can be made in terms of public transport either:

“We don’t live the same way as let’s say the Netherlands or the rest of Europe. If you went to Spain on your holidays and went into any traditional Spanish town, not to mind a city, they live in apartment blocks. They’re not as spread out. They don’t have a town like let’s say Tipperary Town and then on the outskirts of Tipperary Town you have houses and then you have another few villages.

“You’ve 20,000 people living in a town over there and they all live on top of each other so you can actually create public transport in those areas.

“It’s very difficult to create public transport that suits everybody’s needs at every time.”