Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have pushed and pushed it. One of the last projects was the project Dr. Hughes mentioned, between Limerick and Galway. Unfortunately, that happened at the same time as the motorway being built. It was slower than the motorway and therefore was not selected by commuters and passenger numbers are low there. I have no doubt but that were one built to Navan, it would massively reduce the amount of people using the roads that are feeding into the M50. To help the M50, a rail line would take about 15,000 cars off the M50. It would be an investment not just from Navan to Dublin, but for all of the Dublin area as well.

Then we have the rural Ireland element. As for part of the reason this is happening, Teagasc produced a report stating a young family now needs two incomes to pay for itself. If one wants two incomes, one needs to be outside of a large urban area to be able to get those two incomes. We need to do a number of things to disrupt that. We need to make sure that investment is prioritised away from demand to a certain extent. It is not disruption if it completely follows that demand. We also need to make sure that the key elements - communication, transport and education infrastructure - are part of those disruptive investments.

The other element is that the Government needs to move first. We cannot ask foreign direct investment to go to Waterford if the Government will not go to Waterford. We need the Government to lead on that disruption in its own right. As part of that, a guarantee must be given to people in rural areas that they will have access to decent transportation and communications.