Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Sure. If this strategy is approved by the Minister, and I would expect electrification to Wicklow will be included in an approved strategy, it would make sense at design stage to include whatever might be necessary, because there may be some requirement for some planning process to put in a charging system at Wicklow. I appreciate, and agree with Mr. Creegan, that it is a small enough task. Even full electrification to Wicklow, in terms of overhead, would be quite a small price tag compared to other transport projects. However, I would ask Mr. Creegan to consider whether it is sensible at this stage of going for design to include those aspects for Wicklow in it, because obviously the extension to Wicklow makes a lot of sense financially and environmentally and in serving an area that is identified on the regional spatial strategy.

I will move on to BusConnects. Obviously, that is a vital part of the transport strategy for Dublin. It is much needed and I very much support it and the very long public consultation over the past couple of years. It was very in depth and a good example of a public consultation process, where some of the considerations were taken on board and it was tweaked. I think most people are satisfied with many aspects of it.

One aspect for which I have looked for a long time are these circulatory bus services around towns. I noticed the NTA proposed a bus for Bray and for Greystones to circulate those towns. That is important as well, because we know many of these car journeys in towns are these short kind of shopping trips where a bus could provide that service. The last notification I got was that those two routes were to be delivered under phase 7, to be launched in 2023. Is that service just dependent on the new stock arriving? That new stock will be single-deck, I presume. Will it be electric or has that not been decided yet?