Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for making their presentations. This is not a committee on which I normally sit, so I thank the committee members for affording me the opportunity to contribute. I come from east Galway, which was not discussed at all in any of the presentations, so I represent that part of the county that is home to over 46% of the staff of Parkmore Estate, as my colleague, Deputy Ó Cuív said. Coming from Headford and Tuam, along the M6 and with the opening of the M17 and the M18, we are now funnelling even more quickly into the city.

My first question is for Mr. Tony Neary. How long will it take to get the extra slip road that started on Monday completed? Believe it or not, one of my Facebook pages is usually very busy with Mr. Neary's employees contacting me about their frustration with how long they are left sitting in traffic because they cannot make it home on time in the evenings to get to the crèche, doctor's appointments or parent-teacher meetings. While there is progress, the staff in that zone are frustrated and annoyed with how slow it is.

The next question is for the county manager, the city manager and the NTA. Are there funding allocations for putting a dedicated bus corridor or bus lane in place from places such as Athenry and Tuam, far enough out to cope with the capacity so we can keep traffic out of the city? If it works very well during race week, what are the hold ups preventing it being rolled out for a 52-week period?

Finally, with regard to thinking outside the box, I welcome Mr. Brian Coll's presentation. There is a thing called the "bendy bus". I do not know if people have heard of it or if they can discuss it, but has consideration ever been given to putting a bendy bus in places such as Headford, Athenry or Tuam and running it into Galway? It could service Parkmore with a park and ride and keep the traffic out. I believe that would have merit even while we are discussing the bigger stuff. As Brian Coll said, we need time-measured results. There are the bigger pictures mentioned here, but we need results at present. I was in the United States last year and the only thing people spoke about regarding Galway was how long they were stuck in the car. That is not the image I would wish for it, so we need short-term solutions as well as long-term ones. However, the short-term solutions and gains are not very short term when one hears from Mr. Tony Neary about how long it took to complete the slip road.