Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister may or may not be aware that yesterday there was overcrowding on the train services from Kildare and west Dublin into town, so much so that by the time trains reached Castleknock people could not get onto them. I have taken up this matter for the past year and a half with the relevant people involved in transport services because, as more people go back to work, there is a greater demand for public transport. When I was a member of the Cabinet, electrification of the railway line was well advanced and on target to be at detailed planning stage now, but the project seems to have been put on the long finger and has not been included in the extended capital plan for the period 2020 to 2040. This morning when I was talking to commuters about their experiences yesterday, I had to say to them I had no idea when the Government intended to procced with electrification of the Maynooth railway line. I wish I could tell them because when I was a member of the Cabinet, I was confident about the time horizon, but I am not any longer.

I travel to other cities where I see people taking double decker trains. In a carbon conscious world there are far more people using public transport, yet what we are offered in Dublin, to put it mildly, is a very confusing BusConnects report which is well intentioned, but it was a computer based survey carried out by engineers who did not know the city and had to learn about the questionable points made in the proposals from local people and public representatives. I have been excusing the Government on the grounds that it is very occupied by Brexit, but I am now very worried that the commitment to decarbonising the economy through better and more frequent public transport services is slipping behind. When the Minister and I were in government, we had the Luas line extended to Broombridge. We had the tunnel under the Phoenix Park reopened-----

See this speech in context