Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister coming in to discuss how we extend the metro to the south side of Dublin. He may be aware that on Monday night, South Dublin County Council approved a motion, advanced by my colleague, Councillor Francis Noel Duffy, that rather than stopping at Charlemont, Ranelagh or Beechwood, as I believe the Minister and the Department may be considering, that we would continue the metro south west, through my preferred route of Harold's Cross, Terenure, Knocklyon, Firhouse and Tallaght. Thinking really big - cities like Copenhagen have done exactly this - we should put an orbital metro in place where it would run around the south side of the city from Knocklyon to Sandyford to UCD and back into town. That way, we would solve the congestion concerns coming from Sandyford. Critically, it would go back to the original metro design, which was to run a spur to the south west of the city. As the Minister will know, this is an area that is atrociously served by public transport.

I was at a meeting on Monday night in the Hilton Hotel on BusConnects and considering the Rathfarnham bus corridor route. It is going to be the hardest, most difficult route. There was real anger from local people because front gardens are going to be taken away. No matter what we do on that route, we are not going to have the level of public transport the areas deserve and need in order to thrive and develop. There is significant development potential, particularly as one goes further south. On the edges of the mountains, we are building thousands of new houses. The current and projected public transport system - buses and cycling facilities - will not be able to cope with this and the metro is to right option.

It will obviously cost an additional and a significant chunk of money. We should not be scared off doing anything additional because of the national children's hospital. There will be concerns, and the Minister may articulate these in his response, that we do not want to delay the overall metro project. I, for one, am the last person who would wish for that because we need the metro.

This can be done. Under the existing plan the metro will run from Charlemont Street, St. Stephen's Green, O'Connell Street or whatever section one wants to have as the breakpoint. The metro could proceed as planned for the north side of Dublin. When that is going through the whole procurement and rail order phases, one could work out to the Minister's satisfaction the design, costing, and alignment of the extension of the metro to the south west rather than digging up and closing the Harcourt Street line. That is the last major case for this alternative approach.

What the Government is planning to do - it goes back to the 2015 transport plan, so this is not just about this Government in that it has been thought about for a while - about which we became aware recently is to close the green line, to convert what is a highly successful pedestrian access Luas line into a segregated metro route, which cuts off local access to the line and cuts across communities even with measures to try to protect against that, and to close that critical public transport artery for a year to two years. That would miss the opportunity to service a wider variety of catchment areas with a high quality rail-based transport system, which is the scale of ambition we should have and what we need.

It will cost money and may require a complicated planning process. As we are proceeding, we could develop the final rail order for the south side. In terms of engineering coherence, servicing people of south Dublin, meeting our climate objectives and switching from the car-based system choking our city, this is the right way to go. A study published this morning found that Dublin was the worst city in the world for traffic congestion. This city needs this scale of ambition to solve this problem. I encourage the Minister to consider this and I am keen to hear what he has to say on the matter.

See this speech in context