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

I will give another example from personal experience. This is why I am so passionate about the issue. When we were previously in government, I was really pushing metro north. I was involved in that in the nineties and saw the sense of it. In the period from 2007 to 2009, with a lot of resistance from the Department of public expenditure and reform, I was saying we had to build it. It was in the planning system for two years regarding some archaeological issue, which delayed it for two years. Due to that delay, we missed the window and did not build it. We had European Investment Bank, EIB, funding, it was in the four-year plan and it was ready to go. We would have done it in the middle of a downturn, which would have been countercyclical, and we would have done it for a fraction of the cost we will spend in the end. I look back on that time and ask why we did not build it. The main reason was it was in planning due to issues around an archaeological assessment. We have to do archaeological assessments, but my recall is that it was an incredibly drawn out and protracted delay.