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

I fully agree with the Deputy. We are 20 years late on this project. We started it in the late 1990s when I was on the Dublin transportation advisory committee. At the same time, the Danish city of Copenhagen was looking at a project involving a similar length of line. In the meantime, I believe Copenhagen has built three metro lines while our project is still stuck in planning. We have to get it out of planning and start building.

The debate earlier focused on Dublin versus the regions. MetroLink is a critical piece of national infrastructure. The case for it has always been the planning gain. It is not just a metro to Dublin Airport but a project that will allow us to align our housing with sustainable transport systems. It will allow us to plan for sustainable development of housing in the city as well as the development of transport. Transport-led development is where we need to go in addressing our housing crisis. We need real certainty for developers and local councils in the city. We need to tell them that whatever they do, they must ensure new housing is built in close proximity to the new stations that will be in this project. That will guarantee quality of life and an efficient, clean and social city. This is why this project and all the other public transport infrastructure we have are important.

The Deputy is right that we need to move into planning. Given that an earlier iteration of the project has already gone through planning and it has probably been the most researched, assessed and tested project on the planet in the 20 years we have waited for it, I hope we can quickly get the business case completed and the project moved into planning and built.

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