Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party) | Oireachtas source

I rise today with a little bit of good news relating to my constituency in Cork. It is a red-letter day because we have just had information passed on to us about the development of the delivery of Tivoli, Dunkettle, Blarney and Blackpool stations. I welcome that. That will have a huge impact on my constituency across the north side. We have missed a beat when it comes to the Luas line in Cork. I see the project and the design that are there. There should be probably two designs. We are not connecting to Cork Airport, which is wrong. We are not servicing the north side at all. I appreciate that there are problems with topography on the north side, but the north side also runs from east to west, covering from Mayfield all the way over to Knocknaheeny, servicing the Apple computer business and all that.

I want the Minister to take my hometown of Mallow into account. While we have a connecting link with the rail into Cork, we do not have an orbital bus. We have been waiting now for seven to ten years for a Mallow distributor road. If we had an orbital bus in the town of Mallow, it would help get much of the local traffic off the roads. Additionally, we do not have orbital buses in the city centre of Cork, which would allow commuters and the shoppers use it. I implore the Minister. BusConnects is doing a good job. It is trying to do a good job. I see the challenges when it is having its drivers in place, but we have to get orbital buses as well to service local population.

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