Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

There has been a substantial increase in investment in public transport under this Government, as the Deputy rightly mentioned. One of the challenges the Government faced in its early years in office was dealing with a railway network that, by 1997, needed massive investment to prevent it from having to be decommissioned entirely. The Government spent more than €1.5 billion to restructure the railway network and try to make it safe. It is interesting that just €12 million had been invested in the railway network over the previous 20 years, when the Labour Party and Fine Gael had two periods in office. By contrast, some €777 million is being spent on public transport this year.

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