Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will meet more representatives from the Dublin retail industry tomorrow to hear their views on the matter. The Deputy referred to the potential for hollowing out of the city centre. Few developments are more capable of doing huge damage to the vibrancy of our city centre than immense levels of congestion and the inability of people to travel into the city because of the lack of availability of quality public transport.

From the point of view of transport, my objectives in regard to the development of our city centre are clear. I want to have a city centre that is more attractive to live, sell and invest in. To achieve that, we need projects like the extension of the Luas green line to deliver the kind of modal shift to which the Deputy referred. Intensive consultation with individual businesses is under way to see how we can come with a way of doing this which does what it can to meet the needs of the different stakeholders in the city centre. I reiterate that all this is being done to ensure the €370 million investment the taxpayer has made in the cross-city Luas project works in the way intended.

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