Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy for his question, which follows on very much from the question asked by his party's spokesperson. The Deputy will be aware that transport was one of the four prioritised areas for investment under this NDP review and we secured a core allocation of €22.3 billion across the next five years, with a further €2 billion allocated from the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature and Fund to assist with the delivery of MetroLink.

The allocation is significant both as a share of the overall NDP investment and in comparison to the last five years, which saw approximately €13 billion allocated toward transport between 2021 and 2025. It shows the much-needed and significant increase in that capital funding.

As with all other Departments, we are now preparing a transport sectoral plan, as I mentioned to Deputy Daly, for publication in the coming weeks, which will provide further sectoral details in relation to the distribution of those investments and that allocation across the various programmes right across the Department. The Deputy asked about criteria. A clear focus of that plan will be on providing greater certainty on the projects and programmes that will advance and get delivered in the next five years. Deliverability and commencement of projects, and obviously making sure projects are moving through planning, are particularly important.

In developing that plan, I will obviously take cognisance of commitments under the programme for Government, as well as overarching policy commitments already made under the national planning framework, the climate action plan and the sustainable mobility plan. Things like transport-orientated development are going to be critical to enable us to build more homes to add to the 135,000 homes we built in the past five years. A real area of focus for the Government is linking all our critical infrastructure investment to support the delivery of large-scale housing. We have a real opportunity to do that and transport-orientated development in that regard will greatly assist.

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