Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief because I know we have to finish by 3.30 p.m. We spoke earlier about the Luas and the success it has been. When the Luas was being proposed, there were many detractors who said that it would be chaos for Dublin and that Dublin would be ruined by it. We know it has been a success. Similarly, as regards the DART, which is 40 years old now, there were many detractors at the time. There is an RTÉ Archives video going around at the moment from 1983 or 1984 about the project overrun on the DART. The figure was £48 million and ended up being £130 million or something like that, small money when you think about it now. Can you imagine if we had taken the advice of people at the time who said not to do the DART or the Luas? Can you imagine the absolute chaos of congestion we would have in Dublin now? You need to be brave in these projects. Not only do you need to be brave and say you probably will not get to deliver whatever it is within the five-year or four-year term of your government or within a particular term, but you also need to have that vision and be brave enough to say, "This is where we will put the money and this is what we will do."

What everybody working in this area of large transport infrastructure projects needs is surety as to where we are going with our transport policy. That needs to be backed by surety in funding as well. The agreement in the programme for Government, that 2:1 spend on public transport, provides that confidence for all those project managers and all those leaders of our transport agencies that this is baked in. That needs to continue with the next government and the governments after it. That is critical to transport success in this country.

Similarly, on cycling and walking, there is a video Members will see of some street in Amsterdam back in the sixties and a stand-off going on between the drivers, the cyclists and the walkers.