Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. It is an opportunity to take stock of the transport network in Ireland.

Talk in here is cheap. People listening in to this debate this evening, those who are caught sitting on the M4 every morning coming into town or those who are caught in a congested city, or any of my colleagues, Councillors Cormac Devlin, Kate Feeney or Daithí de Róiste, will speak of standing at bus stops every morning and queues of over-full buses passing by them as they cannot stop to pick up passengers. While I agree with many of the aspirations in the motion put, we need to take stock of where we are, what we can do and what actions are needed in the short term.

When the Minister speaks, he always speaks about long-term plans for what will happen and reassuring commuters that in eight or ten years everything will be all right and their journey time will be reduced. When he talks about policy by press release, that is rich coming from a Minister who contradicted himself so many times regarding the route of the metro, even in here in reply to parliamentary questions and Topical Issue debates.

When we talk about the long-term plans, what is abundantly clear is that the Government needs to establish a national infrastructure committee to ensure that large-scale infrastructural projects are delivered in a cost effective and efficient manner. That is needed more than ever.

When we are talking about long-term projects, we need to ask the Government why it scrapped the DART underground, a project that was identified by the NTA as the key to unlocking the potential of the existing Dublin network. The Minister has never once answered fully why that was scrapped.

He mentioned the number of years in which there was no investment and that it could not happen because of the restrictions on the public finances. I acknowledge there were restrictions in the public finances but there were restrictions on other countries' public finances but they used every opportunity they could through funding from Europe which is something that the Government has failed miserably on.

We need to look at how we can get people out of their cars and onto public transport. The only way we will do that is if we provide a good alternative that is reliable and efficient. Certain things can happen within a six-to-12 month period. We can look at identifying park-and-ride facilities outside the M50 to encourage people to leave their cars there and travel into the city on buses. There is a bus route identified under BusConnects from the N4 into town. Fifteen properties is all that are needed to be engaged with to ensure a continuous route from outside Liffey Valley right into the city centre. If that was done now, not in three or four years, that could release a great deal of traffic from the city centre.

The Minister spoke of BusConnects. There is a great deal of support for BusConnects but there is also a great deal of concern and anxiety about it. That concern and anxiety arises out of the failure by the Department and the NTA to engage meaningfully. I was out with Ms Mary Fitzpatrick the other evening on Botanic Road. There was a public meeting held for the residents of that road, not in the community but in TII headquarters. Ms Deirdre Conroy, a candidate for my party, held a public meeting last night which more than 200 people attended. There is concern and anxiety. If the Minister wants BusConnects to work, he must engage with the public to ensure that it will work.

He referred to cycling. He is the one who reneged on his promise on the minimum passing distant, and reduced expenditure on cycling from the year he first took up office to last year by €7 million or €8 million.

There is no identification in the Minister's countermotion with rural transport, something he stated is key to his belief and what he wants to see delivered. The NTA was before the Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport more than three months ago promising the roll-out of an effective night-time rural transport service. We are yet to hear where that goes. I will hand over for my colleagues.

The time for talking is over. The time for action is now.

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