Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. First, to pick up on a theme mentioned earlier, I do not think we can meet our obligations when it comes to reducing emissions, taking climate action or satisfying the demands of young people who want us to do more around climate change without a metro but just like a carbon tax, a metro on its own does not solve the problem. It only deals with one part of the problem but it needs to be all these things and not any one of them if we are serious about taking climate action.

Like the Deputy, I also represent a commuter constituency. Today thousands of my constituents will spend an hour or more in their cars or on the bus getting in and out of town, which has an enormous impact on people's quality of life, but things can be so much better. In a city of this size we can have people getting into the city centre in 30 or 35 minutes, even from the outer suburbs, but that means investing in public transport and cycling and in projects such as the metro and BusConnects as well as, for example, DART electrification to the western suburbs.

All the solutions are not in Dublin. In order to solve our congestion problems we need to build up the other big cities and some other towns so that we have much more balanced development. All the philosophy behind Project Ireland 2040 is about growing those towns and cities at twice the rate of Dublin. Part of the solution to Dublin's problems is to develop our other cities and we are very committed to that. It involves better planning in Dublin so we that have much more high density, which would make public transport more viable. It also involves investment in cycling and public transport, as the Deputy mentioned.

I had a chance to meet the people in the National Transport Authority a few weeks ago to get a briefing from them as to what the direction of travel was. My understanding is that the new alignment, which the authority is going to produce today, will involve some important changes. It will protect the Na Fianna GAA club, which I am sure all of us will agree is very important. It will also protect Kickhams, which is also very important, in order that the club can move to its new grounds and have new facilities in Ballymun. It will change the proposal to tunnel through Ranelagh, which I believe the residents of Ranelagh will very much welcome. Rather than going the full way down the line, the tunnel will stop in Ranelagh and the Luas south of there, the green line, will be very significantly upgraded. The reason the authority decided not to go the whole way down that line is that it would involve closing the Luas for two to four years, which it had determined, and I agree, was not a viable option.

To answer the Deputy's question, notwithstanding the fact that this is a statutory process, we need to be open to suggestions as to where the tunnel should go from there. The Deputy suggested Terenure and Rathfarnham but they have said to me that the density there would not justify it - we would have to put in a lot more high-rise building around there in order to justify it - but that UCD and Sandyford might make sense. "Yes" is the answer to the Deputy's question. I think we should be open to considering that but I would not like that to hold up the project because nobody is arguing against it in the airport, in Swords, Glasnevin, Santry or at the Mater - that entire area has been waiting for this for far too long. I would not like anything to hold that up.

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