Mr. Hugh Creegan:

As the Deputy will know, the review of the national development plan concluded in July of this year. Unlike previous plans, it did not flesh out the details of the individual projects. This was moved to the line Departments. The Department of Transport has its overall allocation year by year for the next five years. It now needs to distribute that across the various sectors it is involved with, including roads, active travel, public transport, rail maintenance and so on. As part of that, the Department has to produce an investment plan saying what funding is available year by year for the next five years for, for example, our area of public transport and what can therefore be accomplished and what projects can be delivered. It is challenging to deliver all that we have. We are now in the happy place that we have 12 core bus corridor schemes that have come through the planning process, although a few still have to go through judicial reviews. Three railway orders have now been granted. We hope MetroLink will come through very shortly. There is a portfolio of things to do. The Department of Transport now faces the challenge of divvying up its budget and telling us what we can do over the next five years. The Deputy is quite right to use the term "holding pattern". Nobody in the NTA, myself included, knows what we are going to be able to deliver over the next couple of years until the Department of Transport finishes that plan.