David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being here this morning. It is great to see a Minister from the Department here. I congratulate him on his promotion and wish him the very best in the weeks, months and hopefully years ahead. This is an issue I have been raising for quite some time. I am lucky enough to represent a constituency that is growing rapidly. A lot of houses are being built there, thousands in Midleton. We are concerned about the N25 road between Midleton and Carrigtohill which the council and TII had huge plans to upgrade. The Minister of State might look at that at another time. Lakeview roundabout is beyond capacity and is very dangerous. There are plans to upgrade the road from Midleton to Youghal as well and to build a new road. Some €450,000 was given this year to appoint consultants and so on. That is all ongoing.

In the meantime, almost every morning now we hear about congestion on the N25 approaching Castlemartyr from the east. Every day this is the case. On summer days there are infuriating long roadblocks of traffic just held up there, all the time. We have a greenway as well going from Midleton to Youghal. It is advancing and is very popular and fantastic to see. I invite the Minister of State to come down during the summer and cycle along it. Part of it is open and more of it will be open later this year. That runs along the old railway line. When that railway line was constructed initially way back, it was meant to be a double line. The greenway takes up about half of it. I have looked at the drone footage taken recently and there is space left almost as wide again.

I was very involved in the campaign to open the rail link to Midleton, which has proven to be very successful, so much so that they are going to move to a ten-minute frequency of trains. They will be battery operated. The trains in the morning and evening peak times are full at the moment. It is really successful. There were calls at the time to extend that line to Youghal. It was deemed not to be economically feasible. In fact, we were lucky to get the service to Midleton open. The crash came shortly after it did open. The Midleton to Youghal link is still there. I have been talking to people about what is possible here. We have come up with an interim solution of a rapid bus transit system. These are very popular all over the world. They do not require tracks or signalling. All it requires is Tarmac the width of a bus, that is all. It does not need to be too big as we could have passing bays for other buses. That could be done along the way from Youghal to Midleton.

I have written to TII and got a letter back saying it was a novel, interesting idea that had not been proposed before but they did not think it would be feasible. I am asking the Minister of State this morning to carry out a feasibility study on this idea to see what it would cost. We do not need a very wide roadway; it can be quite narrow. The width of one bus is enough. We are talking about trams that would move up and down during the day and would link with the train service from Midleton. People from Youghal, Killeagh and Mogeely could use that, which would take some of the traffic off the N25. I spoke about that already. There is really worrying congestion on the N25 between Midleton and Youghal at the moment and this would help.

With the train service to Midleton being improved with regard to capacity and frequency, it would make a lot of sense to do this. I know the new road from Midleton to Youghal is in the planning stage. TII has said it will take years and years - maybe ten years or more - before we see it finalised, and that is being optimistic. This is something that could be done relatively easily. I know there are pinch points along the way, such as bridges that have to be replaced, and there are issues in the area, but all I want the Minister of State to do this morning is to ask TII to carry out a study on it to see what is possible and whether it can be done. There may be some CPOs involved here as well. It is a relatively inexpensive proposal, compared to a railway. I have seen the drone footage. There is space there for it and it would make a lot of sense. It would link the towns of Youghal and Midleton. It would not really impinge on the greenway because the buses would not travel all the time. They would only be there as required, which would be maybe every half an hour or every hour in the middle of the day. It would not impinge on people using the greenway.

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