Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister's officials for the briefing yesterday on NIFTI. It was very clear and concise and explained to a lot of people what NIFTI does and does not do. My understanding is that it does not choose projects, but it was described as a lens through which to assess a project and how it fits with national strategic objectives in terms of planning and other infrastructure.

It is important when we are spending large amounts of public money that they comply with those overall strategic objectives.

I am getting a bit of stick over the N11 in my constituency. I am reassuring people that we will continue with the safety improvement works that need to be done on the N11. We need to maintain our roads to ensure they are safe. We will continue to improve those access points for that roadway to improve safety and help people get on and off that road. There are too many exit points onto it as well.

In tandem we will still proceed with providing express bus routes along that road, which is key. We cannot continue to spend billions of euro on roads and then be expected to spend billions of euro on public transport where they are running beside each other creating competition. We need to be careful about how we spend the money. The N11 has sufficient capacity. If we can get people onto express bus routes and invest in the rail line which is running parallel to and which serves all those population centres down the east coast of Wicklow, that is a smart way to do it. I hope I am right in assuring people that we will proceed with those kinds of measures. The initial plan of six or seven different selected routes across greenfield sites, sensitive environmental areas, third lanes and talks of tunnels was just crazy and created considerable concern among residents. I think we have achieved the right balance there.

I was delighted to hear so much discussion on rail earlier. As the Minister knows, it is an issue close to my heart. I have never heard so much discussion on investment and support for investment in rail infrastructure throughout the country. However, we need to be clear on it. We need to sweat the existing assets. When people talk about high-speed rail, I do not think they understand that to put high-speed rail in place would probably require having four tracks between Cork and Dublin which would cost billions of euro. We should use the existing infrastructure, and ensure those trains run at good frequency at good speeds and serve the population centres along the way.

The key to sustainable public transport is that it must serve populations. I think of stations such as Avoca, Geashill in Offaly and even Castlebellingham in Louth. They are areas where for a small amount of money we could open a station and bring a bit of life and vibrancy back into those towns and build sustainability into them. A lot of life was brought to towns by bringing the railways to them, and a lot of life was taken away from towns by closing railways and depending on cars for getting around the place. That did enormous damage from the 1960s onwards and we need to reverse that trend.

The southern arch route from Wexford to Waterford and on to Limerick could bring that connectivity back. It would cost a small amount by comparison with road investment. I believe the electrification of the rail line from Greystones to Wicklow town could be done for about €20 million, which is small when compared with the price tag on road investment. NIFTI provides a good opportunity for us to do that. Is it meeting a strategic objective? Does it support compact growth? Does it support decarbonisation? It is a helpful tool to have for that.

The Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage recently discussed transport-oriented development, TOD, with representatives of the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, who produced an excellent report on TOD about two years ago. Is there enough collaboration and discussion involving the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Department of Transport and agencies such as the Land Development Agency, LDA, and the CIÉ group to identify an area where, if we provide more trains or buses, we could increase the population to make it a self-sustaining town where those other services follow because there is a population of scale there? Is there enough of that TOD discussion going on involving the Department of Transport, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the LDA and Irish Rail? Irish Rail can develop a railway station pretty simply. It has been doing so for years and has off-the-shelf designs that would fit perfectly. It can do it pretty quickly and it might be worth looking at towns, especially those with closed stations. I ask the Minister to consider all those points.