Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

They are in a necklace around the western side of the Dublin region. They start at Tallaght and go on to Lucan, Clondalkin, Leixlip, Blanchardstown, Clonee, Dunboyne, Swords and Balbriggan. This does not take into account large areas such as Ashbourne on the fringes. This is where an enormous concentration of the new population is.

I have the honour of representing Dublin West. The west of Dublin is struggling to deal with what is occurring. This Government mainly has a type of planning led by developers and the building industry, so it is for profit rather than for people. One change in strategy we wish to see is planning which benefits people and communities rather than for the profit of builders and developers. Builders and developers must make money, but they are making it currently at excessive levels on the backs of struggling new communities which are being left bereft.

Does the Minister realise it is now easier for somebody in west Dublin to buy a house in Cavan, Duleek or Leitrim, where they may get a tax break with the house? In such locations they get a bigger house on a bigger plot of land. As a result of the lack of transportation within the Dublin West area, they may be faster travelling to Dublin, moving on main roads by car, than if they came from a local Dublin estate. This is because public transport currently available is not sufficient.

The leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Rabbitte, and I stood at Clonsilla railway station last Monday morning at 8 a.m. Pat Kenny discussed the same rail line on his programme yesterday. The people were crammed on the train, and it is locally referred to as the Calcutta express. The cramming is to a point that if a woman is heavily pregnant, she can no longer take the train. The level of overcrowding is dangerous. In the latter years of the rainbow Government, this line was marked for expansion. When the Fianna Fáil and PD coalition Government came into office, the proposals were re-examined, which took three or four years. The expansion, on a modest scale, occurred about a year and a half ago. It took eight years to upgrade this magnificent Victorian inheritance of a full railway line to the west of Dublin.

As a result of the Meath by-election, a hastily put together study was published on the re-opening of the Dunboyne railway line. Todd Andrews sold the line, so the reinstatement of the line must be planned after the land is bought back. Anyone with experience knows that each of those stages will take several years. Commuters are buying houses and they are being made car dependent by this Government because they cannot buy a house with access to decent public transport or a quality bus corridor.

There is now a division between the east and west sides of Dublin. The east side is the gold coast and the west side is where ordinary people and immigrants live and people have no public transport. The quality bus corridor into Donnybrook is wonderful. However, it now takes nearly 40 minutes more to get into the centre on a QBC from the west side of Dublin than it did when there was no QBC. This is because the Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, cannot release additional buses because he is caught in an ideological problem on whether or not public bus services should exist.

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