Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Will the Minister at any stage depart from the script and give his opinion on Galway city, which is choked by traffic and one of five cities destined to grow? Park-and-ride facilities have been in its development plans since 2005 and we are now in 2022.

The one glaring error in the Minister's script was the statement that the NTA had "long recognised the importance of high-capacity park-and-ride facilities". No one has recognised it except the councillors in Galway and the people who included such facilities in the city development plan in 2005. Management and the NTA have failed to roll them out. They are only one part of the solution to the traffic congestion in Galway - clearly, the other part is the beginning of a feasibility study on light rail - but the development of park-and-ride facilities will stretch into 2023 or 2024 and there is no consideration of such facilities on the west side of the city at all.

The Minister is committed to public transport. People want to use it. We have a city choked by traffic because all of the eggs went into the basket of an outer bypass, which I never had any time for in the first place and which has gone down another cul-de-sac.

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