William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)

What influence does the Minister of State have in talking to Irish Rail as regards trains going through Portlaoise on to Ballybrophy that can take students to Thurles and places like that? Is there any joined-up thinking because I have loads of students who would love to go on the train? Their parents would love to have them on the train. As the Minister of State knows, even secondary schools are having a problem now because there are students driving to school.

In my day, going to school, no one had a car. I remember one young lad coming in a tractor, but that was all. It was not me. Could there be more joined-up thinking from that point of view to get the best possible results from our time on the tracks?

The railway track is the most truesome infrastructure that we have in this country. It is not that long since somebody, somewhere, decided to take up tracks. I would love to know what the thinking behind closing down railways was. I will leave that aside, because it is not a history lesson here. I would love to see more openings for carriages on trains and more stopping of trains at particular times. Even in the school terms, if there was a change, that would allow students to be brought from A to B. That would be great.

In the national development plan, in this famous envelope, the Portlaoise northern orbital route is not contained in the first round that was opened the other day. Who actually says what is to be done? Who actually says we are going to put a road here and not put a road there? If you take the town I represent now, it has north of 30,000 people in it. You see other places that have half of that population getting something. I want to know who that group of people are. I would love to sit down with them and ask them to tell me why we did not tick boxes. I would love to know that, because as the Minister of State knows, all our traffic is coming through Portlaoise and all going to the west of Ireland. It has nowhere else to go. It cannot hide. We are going down by schools and everything like that. I cannot understand, in my head, why the Portlaoise northern orbital route is not up at the top. I would like the people sitting there to tell me why they are not doing it.