It's not easy being green when you're a shower of muppets


Kermit the Frog once sang: "It's not easy being green." After the Finance Bill last week, I know how he feels.
The constant bad news had left me – like many of us – budget-numb, but on Thursday I wanted to see if two pieces of green legislation had made it through; the parking levy and tax exemption for bicycles. They did.
The €200 levy applies to employee parking spaces across our major cities. The bike scheme offers generous tax breaks to employers and employees on up to €1,000 spent on a bike and accoutrements. The measures are the Greens' stick-and-carrot to get us out of our cars. This is for our own good, apparently.
We'll be healthier (unless we fall under a bus).
We'll be less stressed as we freewheel to our dwindling workplaces.
The rain won't be as bad as we might think: Met Éireann statistics show that the average Dubliner who cycles for 15 minutes into work, five days a week, will get wet on only four days out of 100.
Bicycle shops will thrive: during August, the world's largest bike-maker, Giant Manufacturing, sold a record 460,000 units as a result of rising oil prices.
We'll be happier and more fulfilled. So why is this Great Plan making me saddle sore?
Let's start with public transport.
On Pat Kenny's radio show last week, Green TD Ciarán Cuffe said we have a good system in place and should use it, or the bikes. Agreed, it's better than it used to be, but it's far from perfect.
There are still regular delays on the Dart and poor link-ups. For example, if you're travelling from Swords to Baggot Street you have to take a bus into Talbot Street and a long walk, or another bus, across town. Ask most citizens and they will gripe about some route or another.
The latest figures show that the proportion of people using public transport over cars has remained static for the past four years despite major investment. Some Dublin drivers still doggedly prefer enduring gridlock to using our buses, trains and trams.
When deputy Cuffe was praising CIÉ to Pat Kenny he didn't mention that it will be increasing fares by 10% as the €200 parking levy is being introduced. How much of an incentive to motorists is that? Pay higher fares, the levy or get a bike. Some choice.
Conor Faughnan of AA Ireland said last week the levy was a "cosmetic exercise" which won't alleviate traffic problems, but will just create hardship. With increased fares, of course it will.
His answer – the logical one – is more Park and Ride sites. Last July CIÉ introduced Pay and Display instead, with clamping, at 37 stations on the greater Dublin rail network.
The bike scheme IS purely cosmetic, although maybe no-one's told the Greens yet.
Fianna Fáil knows it will appeal to some people living near the city, but the majority from further afield will pay the steeper fares or still drive and pay the levy. It knows the €400,000 the scheme will cost is peanuts compared to what it can shear off drivers through road tax etc.
It's not a huge amount. Co-incidentally, it's not even as much as we paid the country's prisoners (€467,000) in damages for accidents/attacks in our jails over the past five years.
However, it could be used more effectively on almost anything else other than bicycles. It could have been put towards vaccinating 12-year-old girls against cervical cancer, for example.
Here's a question for the Greens: what kind of country pays its criminals €467,000, doesn't vaccinate its children and spends €400,000 on bicycles?
Every cent counts in the current crisis and yet we're wasting money on this claptrap. If we're going to throw away resources on free bikes, why don't we exempt shoes for committed pedestrians as well? It's ridiculous.
And who is going to police the scheme? What's to stop me getting a tax exempt bike and selling it on at a profit? Will there be roving garda units set up to check ownership of bikes?
This scheme – however well-intentioned – highlights just how inexperienced and naïve the Greens are. The country doesn't want good intentions. It wants strong, intelligent leadership.
Remember Mr Gormley: "It's not easy being Green."
Especially if people think you're a shower of muppets.


November 23, 2008