James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With the protection of the Chair, I ask the Minister to hang on for a second, please. It is an area we should look at and I say that because of the congestion coming into Dublin. At the moment, for somebody living in Cork who wants to drive to Dublin, and there are thousands of such journeys every day, the rail journey time does not compete with the road journey time. That is also the case for Limerick and Galway. If the Minister wants to get cars off the road, we should not be talking about congestion charges or ways to fine and tax people; we should be looking at investing in alternative and more appropriate forms of transport over the next ten to 20 years. It is a horrendous failure of investment that we have not connected the largest airport in the State to our rail network. I think we can all accept that but it is up to us to fix it. That is why I put these points forward to the Minister as part of this new NIFTI process.