Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The days of growing money on trees are over. We realise that is not possible in the current economic climate. However, I am here to talk about another issue.

I am a Donegal man. I welcome Mr. Barry and Mr. O'Neill. I will not give them the Donegal single transferable speech, namely, that it is the forgotten county and that we get nothing, but the work the NRA has done in linking the major intercity routes has been fantastic. As a Donegal man, I have no problem acknowledging this because the motorways from Dublin to Cork, Limerick, Galway and Belfast are phenomenal infrastructural projects. In County Donegal the infrastructural work done on the Clar Barnes route, the bypass in Donegal town, the N56 and the Derry to Letterkenny road has to be acknowledged. I also acknowledge the strong working relationship between Donegal County Council and the NRA.

The next chapter will be exciting and Mr. Barry alluded to it in terms of the strong working relationship the NRA has with the Roads Service in Northern Ireland. Great work is being done on the proposed joint working relationship on the Lifford-Strabane bridge. The key desire for people living in the north west concerns the ambitious but realistic project of linking Letterkenny with Dublin.

Mr. Barry and my colleagues mentioned the A5, in respect of which there is an Executive commitment at Stormont. I am not asking Mr. Barry to comment on this, as it is an internal consideration. That the habitats directive was not complied with is a disappointment. Mr. Barry will not be commenting on this either, but I hope there will not be a further delay and that the project will be fully realised. The disappointing aspect is that the momentum was interrupted and the word on the street is that the project has been shelved, but I know it has not been; rather, it has been delayed. We must work jointly on it.

We need to have a construct around a single-tier plan. I do not know if the proposal is on Mr. Barry's desk yet, but we have a proactive Donegal national roads design office, NRDO, which is willing to consider designing a route from Aughnacloy to Dublin in collaboration with the Westmeath roads design office. This is not to be parochial in terms of the north west or County Donegal; rather, it is about being able to get into one's car on a Tuesday afternoon and travel to Dublin in two and a half hours without having to drive at speeds of 40 to 50 km/h, as is currently the case. I ask the NRA to examine ambitious and realistic plans in Donegal County Council where the NRDO is looking to work in partnership with others to develop the route between Aughnacloy and Dublin, because it will not be acceptable to have a good infrastructural link between Strabane and Aughnacloy and not to have a complementary route between Lifford and Letterkenny and Aughnacloy and Dublin. Bypasses have been built. There is a two-plus-one carriageway at Castleblayney, but it is still not acceptable when one sees what is happening between Limerick, Galway, Cork and Belfast and Dublin. It will not be acceptable to have two-plus-one carriageways. We must be ambitious. While I accept we must be realistic, this is about reconstructing an infrastructure on the island that was in place decades before us with reference to the Victorian railway lines. This is the post-Victorian rail period and we are looking at reconstructing the island. There are gentlemen in this room involved in the peace process, with me, and they have attended the Joint Committee on the Good Friday Agreement. The peace process is not just an aspiration; it is about reuniting our people, in which roads infrastructure has a role to play. Mr. Barry's organisation has an exciting role to play and I look forward, through the Joint Committee on the Good Friday Agreement, to working with him. I ask him to examine the plans and proposals on the table from Donegal County Council and also the NRDO in County Donegal.