Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I welcome the witnesses from Dublin Chamber of Commerce. I believe the comments made by Mr. McGibney on the publication of cost-benefit analysis should apply to the committee. We are supposed to be a budgetary oversight committee but I must confess we do not get this information in any detailed meaningful way. This committee is part of new politics, but very little additional information is provided to it. If it was in order, we should write to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform to request we get this information and that organisations such as Dublin Chamber of Commerce, which does a lot of work among businesses in the wider Dublin region, should also be able to obtain data. It is essential. As a body very involved with many employers establishing businesses broadly in the Leinster and Dublin regions, this information is absolutely vital in supporting the decision by a business to make an investment in Ireland or supporting the decision of a local firm which is expanding to continue.

Does the chamber support making Dublin city a living wage city? One of the problems for people working in the city at present and for businesses is that the shortage of housing and the spiral in rents, traditional low-wage jobs, very often in the retail sector which is big in Dublin, mean it is not possible for people to live. The type of contracts people get, where hours are insufficient, means that often they are not in a position to approach banks or, at times, credit unions with a view to get extra mortgages. I know this is not the subject of today's discussion, but it is very important to have quality jobs and decent pay and conditions for people.

With regard to the projects, has the chamber had a discussion with the Government about the break and gag on capital expenditure in Ireland because of the total inflexibility of the fiscal rules? We are a small country. We cannot avail of the Juncker plan because it is only available to larger countries, and it is not even particularly available to countries such as France and Italy because of the debt levels. There is a huge amount of money floating around the EU, and countries such as Ireland, which have good investment prospects in terms of public investment, cannot access it. Would the witnesses agree the European Investment Bank and public private partnerships are, in many ways, a poor substitute for direct state investment if the deficit rules looked at capital investment separately to current investment? There is obviously scope at different times for many styles of investment but, at present, we are strangled as a country and a city in terms of capacity for capital investment.

I want to ask specific questions about public transport in Dublin. One of the cheapest and fastest things that can be done is the electrification of the suburban railway lines from south and north Kildare into Dublin city and their connections on to other large towns and cities. What is the sense of the witnesses of where the Government is at on this? For example, the Maynooth line should have been electrified a long time ago. We could have a DART service on the Maynooth line, which would increase the carrying capacity of the carriages. We also have on the west side of Dublin, into Kildare and west Dublin, which I represent, significant capacity for the additional building of homes in areas where people would like to buy and where we could have social housing. Given Dublin Chamber of Commerce is such a major body in the city, has it had an opportunity to discuss this with the Government?

With regard to the comments made on buses, Dublin Bus in my view has improved its service substantially and all credit to the people who work there and provide the service. However, it is now dangerously overcrowded because there are just not enough buses. The development of the app by Dublin Bus and the real-time information on bus movements at many bus stops have revolutionised Dublin Bus in a positive way. It is a tribute to the public sector that it has done this, but it does not have enough services. When it is off peak, there are definitely not enough services. If we really want to shift people from the car to public transport, the extension of the DART to other suburban rail services, of which there are quite a number in the Dublin area, would be a very fast win, but it would require an amount of investment. Longer term projects such as metro north are very valuable, but today we have seen the statement by one of the leading people associated with the transport sector that it could not even start before 2022. It would be helpful to us as a committee if Dublin Chamber of Commerce could look at the timeline with regard to the projects on the list. I will give an example of a recent Government decision which I completely fail to understand. There is a strategic development zone in Hansfield in west Dublin, which has capacity for 3,000 houses, provided road access is developed. This road access is expensive but not massively so, and when the Government recently announced a small spend of €200 million on access to get housing sites started, it was specifically excluded in a way that simply makes no sense to me. Given that the committee is about budgetary oversight and spending money to get the best return and best value, I am really confused by some of the decisions, or lack of decisions, of the Government.