Pádraig Ó Céidigh (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Níl a fhios agam faoi sin, sin scéal eile. Níl agam ach cúpla ceist ginearálta. I am the kind of person who looks at the glass half full and not half empty. Unfortunately, sometimes in these Houses we look at glasses as being more half empty than half full. Like Deputy Troy, I believe a strong positive effort has been made here with regard to improving the traffic congestion in Dublin city. From my perspective, it is certainly worthy of being given every fair chance. Having said this, it is important that committee members and others question and challenge it to ensure it is robust and that it has a better chance of working effectively.

I am impressed by the fact that international consultants from Canada have been approached. Very often we do not necessarily have all of the expertise internally in Ireland, and it is useful to get the best practice we can from outside of our country and see how it fits into our requirements.

My questions are on public consultation. I agree that the timeframe should be pushed out by another couple of weeks given the time of the year, as many people may be out of the country on holidays. I would like a sense of where consultation with trade unions and other stakeholders is at. These include bus drivers and key people who make this happen on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour and route-by-route basis.

On integration, as Deputy Catherine Murphy noted, linking with the radial routes is very important for those who live outside of Dublin in terms of how they connect to the internal network in the city. Does the NTA have a sense of the direct and indirect financial implications? What are the environmental implications? How would we know when this is a success? What are the key performance indicators? What would tell us we have achieved the specific goals? It is only then we would be able to measure how successful or otherwise we are.