MEP: ‘Rainbow shining over Cork’
An Ireland South MEP has highlighted Cork’s crucial role in helping to lead the EU to carbon neutrality as she settles into her new constituency office in the city centre.
Green Party MEP Grace O’Sullivan recently opened her new office in a historic building on Washington Street to serve as a “green hub” in Ireland’s second largest city.
In 2022, it was confirmed by the European Commission that Cork and Dublin were among 100 cities set to participate in the EU Mission for climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030.
Elected to the European Parliament in 2019, Ms O’Sullivan is an ecologist, an environmental education specialist, and a former Greenpeace activist, and was a crew member of the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed by the French Foreign Intelligence Service in 1985.
“It is wonderful to have an office on Washington Street. I felt we had a really lovely céad míle fáilte from the people of Cork,” Ms O’Sullivan told the Cork Independent.
“The facts are that Cork has the highest population within the whole of Ireland south and, as many people will say, that Cork is the real capital of Ireland.
“For me, the rainbow is shining over Cork very much. The thing with Cork is, I just feel the potential is tremendous in terms of that pathway towards carbon neutrality.
“Cork is going to receive substantial funding from Europe through the Horizon Project to help it to lead on the pathway to carbon neutrality,” she added.
Ms O’Sullivan recently welcomed the passing of a vote in the EU Parliament which will see the sale of all new internal combustion engines phased out by 2035 across Europe. Ireland’s climate action plan aims to achieve this goal by 2030, meaning all car registrations in Ireland will be electric after from 2030 onwards.
“When I was elected to the European Parliament in 2019, I remember we talked then about the internal combustion engine. There is a transition period but what it does do is it definitely sends a message to the industry that we're moving towards a phase out of the internal combustion engine,” said Ms O’Sullivan.
“In tandem, we must invest in public transport and we must ensure that it is not only affordable but also accessible so that people in Cork and in the rural environment have much, much better access to public transport.
“We are moving positively in a direction of supporting and investing in public transport but I think we need to do more and ensure that it's a real option and people have a real choice.
“I think we'll look back in 20 or 30 years and realise that this move was a huge shift and a huge signal to the producers,” added the Waterford native. Addressing the recent controversy surrounding Irish forestry entity Coillte and its deal to sell Irish land to London-based investment firm Gresham House, Ms O’Sullivan said she was not surprised to see big investment funds looking to invest in sustainable development.
“The first thing from a European and an EU perspective is that Ireland has a really low tree coverage. One way or another we are going to have to see more tree coverage.
“In the past, many of these companies would have looked to oil companies and fossil fuel companies, and they are now investing in what they consider to be green alternatives.
“Practically, we have to look at the investments that large pension companies are doing. We have to be realistic that these companies are there and part of the big business community that we live in.”