Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is right. The solution cannot be more road capacity because, effectively, it is leading to the M50, which is at full capacity. Even then, we are rightly going to allocate space on the M50 for BusConnects. Therefore, we would be bringing traffic to a complete bottleneck. That would serve no one. The Deputy is right; there has to be alternative. There has to be investment in rail. It has to be demand management, car sharing and all the other measures we mentioned earlier. Park-and-ride facilities will have a role to play.

The key issue will be budget allocation because, and I keep going back to this, we have €35 billion in the national development plan, NDP. There is €100 billion worth of projects. To make that work, we have to prioritise the likes of the DART+ project, which will triple the DART capacity. Critically, that is not just an issue for County Dublin. It also affects the surrounding counties of Meath, Wicklow, Kildare and Louth. It is not just the DART+. The new intercity railcars, ICRs, are putting on some of those commuter rail routes. What we also need to do is align the development plans with the rail lines in the review of the national planning review that is happening at the moment. If there is to be an expansion of the population goals and targets and so on in the surrounding counties around Dublin, in my mind, that has to be in locations that are within walking, cycling and bus connection distance of railway stations to get people in and out of the city, if that is part of their commuting pattern. It is about investing in those rail and bus solutions and park and ride. It is about getting the planning connections so that those new houses are close to those services. That is the only way it is going to work.