Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

I will travel to Wexford this evening to attend a dinner and I will speak at a conference in Rosslare in the morning so I will have two opportunities to travel the road tomorrow and have a good look at it and see what condition it is in. There is a good case for maintaining long-term reservations. The Harcourt Street line was maintained for 40 or 50 years and we are glad it was because we were able to build the Luas. The same can be said about the Dunboyne and Navan line. I would be very reluctant to cancel reservations where motorways may be built, even if it were in 30 or 50 years time.

However, we do need planning authorities to be pragmatic, and the NRA needs to be pragmatic about planning along these routes. Certainly, I do not believe that construction such as farm buildings, temporary structures, sheds and greenhouses should be barred along these roads if the road will not be built in a reasonable period of time. I will have to do some work on this in the next while.

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