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

It is just not enough. The Dunkettle project alone will cost over €200 million. Can I say something else about road projects? People do not like to talk about successes in Irish public policy but road construction has been one of the real leaders when it comes to delivering projects on time and under budget. It happened on the Baile Bhairne to Macroom project and on the Dunkettle project as well. Both projects are way ahead of schedule, as the Minister knows, which is great.

Can we not just throw caution to the wind and get them built? There are several projects that would make a transformative difference to rural Ireland that could be done without adding to our carbon emissions. The project in Castlemartyr, for example, will take 21,000 vehicles a day out of a village and residential area. A lot of that is commercial, heavy-goods traffic for which there is no alternative. That traffic is not going to turn into buses. Effectively, those projects could commence immediately if there was a bit of urgency shown by the Department.

As I said to the Minister, I know this project inside out. I know that he knows that so I cannot accept the bluff. What I will say is that the amount of bureaucracy involved is incredible. The Minister is a Green Party Minister and has been one of the leading voices on climate change in Ireland for decades. I commend him for that and he should be shown a degree of respect for it but we cannot even get a train line built here.