Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With due respect, the Minister will not even be happy with the answer provided because the first third of it was a civil servant's potted history of the rail line itself. I welcome robust analysis. No project should ever happen in the Department without robust analysis, but how is this for robust analysis? Meath has roughly the same population as Kildare, a higher population than Wicklow and a higher population than Louth, yet both of those counties are well served by regular rail services into Dublin.

The Minister said he is responsible for policy and that the NTA and Iarnród Éireann are responsible for transport and heavy rail lines, but he is responsible for those two organisations as well. It is not the case that he shares the Department with them. He is in charge of all those organisations. The NTA said the people of Meath should have buses, but the fact is there is no continuous bus route from the centre of County Meath into Dublin. The bus lanes have massive pinch points along the way and traffic regularly gets snarled up.

Not only is Navan the largest town in the country not to have a rail line but the bus service is the most expensive one in the country. The cost works out at 26 cent per kilometre compared with the Dublin to Drogheda route which costs 16 cent per kilometre. We are not talking about a massive distance. We are only talking about 30 km on an alignment that already exists.

There are two variables that will determine whether this project goes ahead. The first is population. As we discussed, Meath has roughly the same population as comparable counties. The second variable is political will. The issue is whether the Independent Alliance has the political will to build the necessary infrastructure in this country. The truth of the matter is that capital investment in this country is second from the bottom in the European Union. The only country beating the Minister with regard to low investment is Romania. Until that changes, the Minister will not be fulfilling his responsibility.

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