Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I am a little disappointed in that there is no commitment to ask Irish Rail to hold off until that meeting can be held. I accept that we are not living in normal circumstances, but this is important. This is a major project and we cannot get it wrong.

I would like to mention a couple of things. The Fingal County Development Plan 2017-2023 includes two local objectives. I worked on that plan, and that work commenced in 2014-2015. The objectives are to preserve the existing pedestrian or vehicle right of way at Coolmine level crossing and to prohibit any road bridge across the train line at the canal and Riverwood station court. There are a number of questions being asked by myself and by local people. For example, how do we encourage people to make submissions to county development plans in good faith and tell them that their voices matter and will be heard? How do we encourage councillors - this applies also to strategic housing developments and other legislation that is being brought in that overrides the county development plans - and convince people to spend hours, often days, on county development plans when they can be overridden?

There is another issue I would like to raise. We need to create a level playing field for local communities versus large organisations, be they State or corporate in nature. The webinar was held by Irish Rail engineers and experts. They have the funding, a budget of €2.6 billion, to hire the best minds in the country. What do the people have? They have nothing but their own resources. They have no expertise and they cannot call on expertise unless they can pay for it. In terms of the strategic housing development at the Brady's Castleknock Inn site, people spent thousands of euro to get professional help. Will the Minister give consideration to the provision of funding for communities like Riverwood, St. Mochta's and others along the DART railway line, and in respect of strategic housing developments, to enable them to get the professional help that the other side always has? The latter have deeper pockets than the people. These are huge projects, costing billions of euro.

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