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

As the Deputy will be aware, earlier this year, the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, and I met representatives of landowners in that area and representative bodies, including the IFA. After that meeting, the Minister of State and I requested the project team tasked with delivering the western section of the Dublin to Galway greenway to commence a consultation process with landowners along the preferred route. A report was provided to the Minister of State and me, and we published it. We made it fully public because we want the matter to be in the public domain and be transparent.

Having discussed the report with my officials, and the Minister of State and I having considered the report's conclusion, our decision was to pause the further development of the Galway and Roscommon sections to allow time to reflect on the issues raised and to give consideration to the possibility of developing a new route that works locally and has the support of key landowners. I appreciate - this was evident in the report - that overall the level of support among landowners along the Roscommon section of the then preferred route was positive. That was one of the reasons we decided to publish the report. I wanted all that to be in the public domain. Based on our joint prospective, we could not progress with that section of the route in its entirety without being clear as to how we would deal with the Galway portion of the route.

In the interim, my Department will focus on completing the section of the greenway from Maynooth to Westmeath through Kildare and Meath, which has planning permission in place and is ready for development. The reason the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, and I met the landowners and the reason we decided to go ahead with other parts of the greenway was to make very clear our commitment to the completion of the overall project. A Dublin to Galway national greenway would be a massive piece of public infrastructure and I am committed to putting in place a process to complete that largest section.

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