Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate, although the change to the title has caused some problems, which were entirely foreseeable. Therefore, I am quite surprised that the issue of the day was not front and centre in the Minister's contribution, but I will come back to that.

I lend my support to the students of Ireland on the fare reduction scheme currently in place. I would like very much for that scheme to be continued to incentivise further the students to use public transport to get more people out of their cars. Most Members of the House to whom I have spoken so far over the past day agree with that, so I ask the Minister of State to convey that to the Minister.

I call on the NTA to ensure that Dubliners are not deliberately excluded from the 90-minute fare zone. As the Minister of State will have heard, Skerries and Balbriggan are not included but clearly should be. An exception should be made and we should get that done. Deputy O'Dowd mentioned the massive fare variations after Balbriggan or the station after that. We need to move away from that. It should be a fare based on getting on and getting off, not the distance travelled. If we want to encourage people to use sustainable transport and battery electric trains, we should charge them a modest amount and the State will pick up the tab for the transport company because it is about the environment as well.

The only thing we should be discussing, however, is the predictable and unforgivable scenes at Dublin Airport at the weekend. Ministers have met with the DAA, yet we are no clearer if the scenes of last weekend will be repeated this coming bank holiday weekend. I have very little faith that they will be avoided. How many need to be in the queue before somebody asks if heads should roll? If airport operations cannot be managed, I cannot be alone in suggesting there needs to be a change. I am not referring to the chief executive, who has already announced his intention to move on. We have known for almost three months that passenger numbers were rising. It is unacceptable to hear that the DAA does not know how many passengers it is to expect on any given day. It sells the slots, it knows the aircraft types and it can extrapolate the data, yet it does not appear to be capable of doing so. That is frankly bizarre. The whole situation stinks.

It would be remiss of me in the last few seconds I have left not to mention sustainable transport and Dublin Airport in the same breath without mentioning MetroLink. We are almost at the end of quarter 2 and the railway order was due by the end of quarter 2. I would like to know where that railway order is and to hear back from TII as to whether any aspect of the delivery of MetroLink can be accelerated.

Having spoken with industry experts in other jurisdictions in recent months, I find it hard to believe that the people of Dublin cannot expect a metro until 2034, and rising. We need to get real. We need to have a critical analysis of the skill set within the planning sections in Departments and their ability to deliver on these critical pieces of social transport infrastructure.

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