Mr. Hugh Creegan:

To return to Deputy Catherine Murphy’s questions, she is absolutely correct that the extension of DART+ covers only a short distance but, as of now, we do not have a policy in place to extend the DART to Kilcock. The national development plan, our transport strategy and probably all the local development plans provide for it being to Maynooth, and we do not want to walk into An Bord Pleanála with something that leaves us open to legal challenge. Irish Rail intends to submit its planning application within the next two months. Our intention, as we have said before, is that it will be a short extension to get from the depot to as far as Kilcock. Some steps are required but they are definitely doable, and we see no difficulty in doing that as a parallel project and in having it come on stream when DART+ West is completed or shortly thereafter. What we do not want to do is delay or cause a problem for the main DART+ project as it goes through its planning process. I hope that within a number of years, we can get that project out to Kilcock given, as the Deputy mentioned, it is a short distance.

On extending it to Newbridge, we do not have that in the strategy. We have only as far as Kilcock in the strategy. On the Sallins question, the intention was that there would be new stations along the bypass. We considered relocating the existing station but it would be too great a move for people who live in the village of Sallins to go up to-----