Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)

Ba mhaith liom ar dtús mo chomhghairdeas ollmhór a ghabháil le Catherine Connolly ar an mbua iontach a bhí aici an tseachtain seo caite. Guím gach rath uirthi. Déanaim comhbhrón le Sr. Stan. Laoch ab ea í a d'oibrigh go díograiseach ar son iad siúd a bhí gan dídean sa tír seo. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dílis. Déanaim cáineadh orthu siúd a chur an teach IPAS i nDroichead Átha trí thine. Ba bheag nár bhfuair páistí agus tuismitheoirí bás sa teach sin ar an oíche.

This morning, commuter traffic on the M3 going to Dublin was backed up well into County Meath. The journey for tens of thousands of people took two hours. Meath is the biggest commuter county in the country. It is the only county in the country where the majority of workers leave the county to go to work every single day. Some 90,000 people in Meath commute to work on a daily basis and 60,000 of those are forced to use cars due to the lack of a rail line. Navan is the biggest town in the country without a rail line at the moment. In 1994, Fianna Fáil's Noel Dempsey promised to build a rail line between Navan and Dublin. The delivery date slipped and slipped. We were promised to have it in 2015 but it was never built.

I am the chair of the Meath on Track campaign and the people of Meath have campaigned strongly for this over the years and yet we still do not have that rail line. In 2021, it was promised to us again. We were told that the building of the rail line would start by 2030 and it would be built by 2036. This promise was met with derision in County Meath, to be honest. It is typical horizon politics - so far in the distance that it never gets done. In 2036, it will be 42 years since the rail line was first promised by Fianna Fáil.

In 1862, the original Navan to Dublin rail line was built in three years with picks and shovels. Despite all the technology we have now, the wait for the project is now heading towards 42 years. It is incredibly glacial in its delivery.

The economic cost of congestion in the greater Dublin area is incredible. Some €336 million was the cost of it in 2024, according to the Department of Transport, and it is estimated that by 2040, congestion in the greater Dublin area will cost €1.5 billion. Studies have been done on congestion in European cities and Dublin is the worst in terms of time and cost. There have also been studies of the speed of traffic in Dublin at the moment. The average speed eight years ago was 12 km/h. The average speed of horse-drawn carriages in Dublin in the 19th century was 16 km/h. We currently in an incredible crisis in terms of infrastructure in the Dublin area.

Why is that this Government cannot deliver infrastructure on time? Why is it that we have the slowest planning, permits, judicial reviews and tendering in the whole of the European Union in terms of such projects? When will the Navan to Dublin rail line be built? What will the Government do to change the glacial pace of infrastructure in this country?

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