Ireland can learn from China’s rural transport strategy when it comes to expediting delivery of projects such as MetroLink and Cork Light Rail, Minister of State Jerry Buttimer has said. He said Ireland had been behind the curve in developing infrastructure but that China excelled at rolling out big projects.
“They’ve developed a rural transport strategy. They’ve developed a light rail and a rail system that is carbon friendly, that is meeting their climate change commitments,” he told The Irish Times.
“We’re now looking at our biggest transport project, the MetroLink, at €8 billion and looking at Cork Light Rail. How can we deliver it quicker, faster, recognising that we have a new planning regulation and see where can we learn from what they’ve done over here? And I think it’s something we have to be ambitious about, we have to be in a way very determined, very focused, because we need to move on infrastructure and the Chinese are exemplars in that.”
Buttimer, who is a Minister at the Department of Transport and the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht, was speaking in Beijing after a meeting with China’s vice-minister for transport. He is in China representing the Government for St Patrick’s Day on a visit that will also take him to Shanghai and Hong Kong.
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Buttimer has been a long-standing critic of China’s human rights record and a supporter of self-determination in Taiwan and he is a member of the International Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), which is viewed in Beijing as a hostile group. He told The Irish Times he supports the Government’s commitment to the One China policy and that as a Minister, he is no longer active in Ipac.
“I have been critical of China, but I have had many positive engagements with leaders who’ve come to Cork, come to the Oireachtas and with the ambassador in Dublin, and I would say I’ve matured in my approach. I recognise we live in a world that is not as black and white as maybe I thought it was or should be, and as a consequence of engagement, I hope I’ve brought people on a journey as well,” he said.
“As a member of the Oireachtas, we’re free to be part of friendship groups, and as a Minister, you obviously don’t become part of any group any more, and I haven’t been engaged in that at all because it’s not part of what you can do as a Minister. You’re separate from the Oireachtas, in terms of friendship groups and organisations. I think part of it was about the human rights piece and about the whole way, as a member of the LGBT community, I felt we needed to be a part of a movement to bring change.”
