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

I agree with both Deputies. I was not forgetting north Kildare and the DART+ South West. A lot of projects are coming, and they will get through planning. I am confident that we are going to see them start to come through the planning system now. We must then immediately start thinking that now we have got them through planning, let us build.

I will make one broader and much wider point about the reason why this strategically makes sense. We will be going into a review the national planning framework and what we are likely to see coming out of that is a recognition that our population is increasing faster than we thought and we need to provide for greater growth. The growth has to be sustainable, however. It was interesting that Deputy Tóibín earlier gave the example of Meath commuters having the longest commute. We have to make sure that where we put in new housing now is transport-led development and that it is as close as possible to where new rail services are going so that we have a really good quality of life where we have fast ways of getting around. That is why these services are important. It is not just about the transport. When we upgrade the transport, it allows us to build more housing close to stations and that is how we should really look at this.

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