Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his detailed response and will take his points of view on board. I am glad the urban regeneration development fund will open up for applications again before the end of the year. I will work closely with officials in the Kildare County Council, as I have done up until now, to ensure that we put our best foot forward for a second bridge for Newbridge. This bridge meets the objectives of the national planning framework, that is, sustainable, balanced development. It ticks all of those boxes. There is a pot of money of €10 million from the NTA for it to use Newbridge as a pilot scheme to develop an overall transport framework that could then be rolled out as a template for other provincial towns. This is a massive opportunity for us and we cannot allow that opportunity to be wasted. A second bridge is needed for that plan to work in its entirety.

Project Ireland 2040 is about making our towns and counties better places to live in. Many of my constituents in Newbridge aspire not to have to travel up the N7 or on the overcrowded trains out of Newbridge every day, and instead to be able to work locally in the area. A second bridge over the River Liffey would make Newbridge an even more attractive place for industry to invest in. We have jobs, industry and investment at the minute, but we yearn for more to give more options to our residents to live there.

I take the Minister of State’s point of view on board that it would help if the bridge had planning. There are ways that we can further that objective, perhaps, as we have developed sections of road privately. It may be possible to do that as well with a bridge. We will continue to do that work.

I will finish by saying that there are maps dating back to 1752, drawn up before the town started, marking the new bridge in the vicinity of Old Connell, and that gave its name to Droichead Nua. Hundreds of years later, our needs are very different but the demand and pressure on our town is very significant. Newbridge requires a second bridge or traffic will have nowhere to go off Main Street because it is currently congested. The benefits for residents and for the wider socio-economic environment in the greater Newbridge-south Kildare area are very significant, and I look forward to an application going into the Minister of State in the near future.

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