Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said that he would be “very happy” to see the Leinster House car park removed if alternative facilities were put in place for TDs and Senators.
However, he insisted to the Irish Mirror that the nature of a politician's job means that they “need a car”.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan recently suggested that he believed the car park could be converted into a “green space at the centre of the city”.
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When asked if he believed that it should be removed, Mr Varadkar described it as a “horrible car park”, referencing old photographs that showed a large garden and an open space between the National Library and the National Museum.
“I'd be very happy to see the car park replaced and that area brought back into public use, '' he said.
“But I think we need to be practical. There would have to be an alternative for TDs.
“Whether they're rural TDs or urban TDs, it's not the case that TDs come to the office once a day and go home.
“Any TD probably has to be in 20 or 25 different locations in any given week in their constituency, in Dublin, elsewhere.
“We'd have to have some sort of arrangements around parking, perhaps using one of the multistories or something like that.
“The nature of a job of a minister or a TD is not that we just have one workplace in any given week. The nature of the job is that you do need a car from time to time. I would have no objection to the Leinster House car park being removed, but only on the basis that we'd have a realistic alternative.”
Tánaiste Micheál Martin said that he was “anti-fossil fuels more than he was anti-car”. He said that more people should use public transport and that investment was needed in the area.
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