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

I expect the review to be concluded very shortly. I have not had a chance to see it yet but I understand a draft version is very close to being presented by the NTA. The first thing will be the NDP review. As I said on radio the other day, and am happy to repeat here today, I expect some €35 billion in our overall capital allocation for the next decade. A lot of the projects we need to deliver we have to think about in a 2040 context, such is the scale of the investment we need to make. I refer here to DART+, Metro, BusConnects, metropolitan rail in Cork, Galway and Waterford as well as Dublin, Rural Link and Connecting Ireland. We need an incredible array of projects and it is going to take two decades to deliver a lot of them. The Navan rail line is just one example of the myriad of projects which make real sense in my mind, as I have said in this Chamber previously. I have not seen the NTA's draft report yet but I hope that Navan may be included. We will certainly support it within the NDP but I cannot give specific timelines and start dates because we have such difficulties with our planning system in getting any projects through the planning process in any reasonable timeframe. Planning approval is the first prerequisite.

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