James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for attending. This Topical Issue is very straightforward and I hope he will see the practical sense in what I am proposing.

Dublin Port is carrying out a major expansion plan that will meet its future needs. In the context of what is taking place in the world right now, never has investment been so important to ensure we have access to ports for trade. The planning application that is before An Bord Pleanála includes the construction of a new bridge alongside the toll bridge over the Liffey. That bridge is able to facilitate a Luas to go across it. When Dublin Port was bringing its planning application to An Bord Pleanála, it consulted with the NTA to ensure that its application would meet the future needs of public transport in that area.

As the Minister of State will be aware, one of the largest housing projects in Dublin city is under construction in Poolbeg, on the famous glass bottle site, with already 500 homes built there and 3,500 homes to be ultimately constructed. There are also plans for a hotel in the area, which have been put forward by the planning applicant. Potentially, there could be 10,000 people living there. To put that into perspective, the population of Ringsend and Irishtown in 2016 was 10,000, so we are talking about doubling the population in an area that has not had many people living in it. It is essential that we have joined-up thinking when it comes to our housing and that people have the public transport infrastructure they need.

There is a lot of criticism in this country about how we deliver major infrastructural projects, but one project that was delivered on budget and on time was the last major extension of the Luas, the Luas cross city. I ask the Government to consider, in the context of the review of the national development plan, progression of the Luas Poolbeg extension to a planning stage in the lifetime of this Dáil. The Luas to Finglas is already before An Bord Pleanála. The Luas to Lucan is at an option stage. This relatively minor extension is a third Luas extension project which has a lot of merit. It could transform the area, link in the high-frequency bus routes and the DART+ in the area and, most importantly, serve the future transport needs of the more than 10,000 people who will be living in the area. Surely it is common sense that when Dublin Port will be building this bridge, which, assuming planning gets approved in the next month or two, could be within the next two to three years, at the same time that the NTA will be working lock, stock and barrel with this Dublin Port expansion plan, the NTA will be ready to put forward to An Bord Pleanála its application to extend the Luas. We are really talking only about anywhere between 2 km and 4 km, depending on how the route would be done. It would connect the north inner city to the south inner city. The red line would go across the Liffey and we would be developing the kind of integrated transport network for Dublin that we all want to see.

We know that the changes we have made when it comes to transport in Dublin, particularly when it relates to high-frequency bus routes, have been hugely successful. The numbers are through the roof. We know that if we build additional public transport, those numbers will follow. We could have 3,000 people every single hour travelling up and down on the Luas. I ask that this project be given heavy consideration in the context of the upcoming review of the national development plan in the summer.

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