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

Any development plan should, to my mind, be conditional on real certainty as to where the public transport is going to go in. We should not be developing any area or putting this into any development plan if we do not have concrete certainty around the development of public transport nodes in those areas. Otherwise, we are confining people to a future of car-based dependency, which will not work, will not serve the community and will not serve the country.

The issue about the extension of the line beyond Cherrywood will be critically dependent on what happens to the metro and, as I have said, that is not yet even in the planning system. Even when it is, MetroLink will be a project which runs to and stops just south of Ranelagh. There will be a further study looking at the alternatives after that because, for example, if it was to extend in a south-west direction, that would not resolve the problem of capacity on the existing green line. The other options would be to upgrade the green line or to run a spur via UCD and Stillorgan to Sandyford, which would address the capacity issue on the green line.

That capacity issue is not a short-term issue. We should be very careful to say to Wicklow County Council and others that they should not be developing sites for projects or housing in areas on a speculative basis where we think there might be particular projects down the line. We should focus on those areas where we know there is expansion, with BusConnects and with the DART+ programme, and where we know the Luas extensions, for example, the Finglas extension, are going to come. We have to start integrating planning and development. I, more than anyone else, will support public transport extensions but we cannot have housing where we do not have certainty we will have public transport.

See this speech in context