Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Public transport is bus based because of the way our population is dispersed but with regard to heavy rail, if we take Dublin and Cork, for example, Dublin has a much wider footprint. The three outer counties, and it is four if we include Louth, would benefit from, say, DART underground, which has been described as the game changer. One of the reasons we got European Union funding for the first round of Luas projects was because of the costs arising from congestion including insurance costs, air emissions, time lost and so on. Would Professor Reynolds-Feighan agree that as Dublin has the wider footprint in terms of the population of that geographic area, which is approximately one third of the country, investment in that area is key to making a difference in terms of the public attitude to public transport where it would have a wider benefit?