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

The consultation on MetroLink will not be easy if we do not have the full engineering facts. As I understand it, we will not get the revised solution and the revised options on the southside of the city until the end of March. We are flying slightly blind without that. The engineers will rightly say that the greater Dublin transport strategy set out their preferred approach but nobody understood at that time that the Government would go with the driverless, segregated system that would effect the southside in the way it might, or that it would change the entire route because it would not build the DART Interconnector, which was another critical piece of infrastructure that it effectively abandoned.

There are three options, one of which would be to connect with the green line in whatever way. We will have to wait until March for the detail to see what the preferred solution on that is. The engineers may well rightly say that is still their preferred solution as it always was. We have to hear what they have to say. Second, good engineers say to me that when a tunnel machine is running it is so much cheaper and easier to keep going and the route south west to Terenure, Rathfarnham and Tallaght would be of great benefit to that section of the city, which is very poorly served by public transport. Third, and I have raised this with the Taoiseach here in the Dáil as an option, the Government could keep the tunnel machine running south east and connect to University College Dublin, UCD and Sandyford.

It would be capable of providing for the increasing volume of traffic on the long run from Sandyford and Cherrywood on the southside and we would not have to upgrade the Luas green line. These are the three options available.

Does the Taoiseach agree that whatever solution we pick we will not abandon the southside? I am worried because the Taoiseach mentioned the metro to the city centre. If the press reports are accurate, this is what the Government is thinking and it has abandoned the southside. We cannot afford to abandon the southside, the west or the northside. Our entire transport system requires radical change. Whatever happens on the southside should not cause any delay on the northside. We should proceed with the railway order to ensure the northside section is built. Deputy Rock is shaking his head. I do not know what his view is but no doubt we will hear it. Whatever route we pick it should not undermine the case for BusConnects. We fundamentally stand with BusConnects because the projections from the NTA indicate that even with all of these projects, the transport emissions in Dublin will increase by 30% when we need them to decrease by 30% by 2030. The scale of the change we need to make is huge.

The Taoiseach mentioned consultation on this project. How do we consult when we do not have the final plans? Does the Taoiseach agree that we should not abandon the southside, that we should not delay the northside element and that we need BusConnects and the metro in order to start making the city work?

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