Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will revisit issues I have raised with the Minister in this Chamber and elsewhere on a number of occasions. One issue is the huge gap in access to transport services for the people of the north west. On the last occasion I pointed to the map in the excellent Connected report produced by IBEC and the CBI. It sets out the motorway infrastructure and few pages following it the rail infrastructure is set out but there is huge gap in that half a million people in counties Donegal, Derry and Tyrone have no motorway access, rail access or air access to the capital city in Dublin. Given the new plan, Ireland 2040, and given that a huge proportion of our population, public service and jobs are based in the capital, people must have the required level of access to it. We need justice in this regard. The Minister has committed to work on a number of the issues and I appreciate that.

On Monday of this week, the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, and the Minister for Heath in the North, Michelle O'Neill, jointly opened the new North West Cancer Centre in Derry. It will provide radiotherapy services for the population based in that region. It is a tremendous model of the Governments working together in the interests of the people of the region and it is also a vision for the future.

I appreciated the Minister's commitment regarding the A5 and his strong words of support on the last occasion, so I will not go over that again, but I wish to raise a number of issues with him. We are fortunate in my region to have two chief executives, namely, John Kelpie in Derry City and Strabane District Council and Seamus Neely in Donegal County Council, who are working together collectively in terms of the city region. Their vision is to double the size of Letterkenny and to work with Derry city to develop them into being magnets for investment for the region, whereby if one is in west, north or east Donegal, County Derry or in Country Tyrone, one could link into those two cities as magnets for investment. There is traffic gridlock in Letterkenny town that we hope to develop into a city. The Minister will say that there is traffic gridlock in all the major cities, but the difficulty in Letterkenny is that it has a very poor public transport system. Therefore, people do not have alternatives. They have to use their cars to travel from the rural areas to the town to go to the hospital, the institute of technology or to their jobs, and I am sure having those facilities in place is the vision the Government would have for developing the regions. I ask the Minister to do all he can to ensure funding is provided for the N56 Letterkenny relief road, which would greatly reduce the pressure of that gridlock and in the overall scheme of things it would not involve a huge amount of money. The plans have been completed and submitted. I ask that in the review of the Government's capital plan that the Minister will consider putting forward that project as one of the key drivers of developing Letterkenny towards becoming a city and hopefully developing the economy of County Donegal for the future.

The second issue connected to this theme is the City of Derry Airport. I reiterate that the Wild Atlantic Way has been a tremendous success, as has the Causeway Coastal Route. The way we can join all that together to ensure they complement each other is by investing in the City of Derry Airport. One might ask why I would say that as a Donegal man but 40% of the passengers who use the City of Derry Airport are from Donegal - 150,000 every year. That airport is the centre of the economic and tourism future of the north west, that region comprising half a million people, but it is not getting one cent of investment. It used to get investment from the Irish Government but it does not now. I appreciate that the Minister has a plan for the airports and there is a concern in his Department about public service obligations, PSOs, but I ask that he meet members of the management of the City of Derry Airport. I understand the board of the airport will by now have made a request to meet him. I believe he will be very impressed with them and their vision. He will know that there will be a PSO route linking Derry to London and possibly to other British cities. It would be important to also get a link to Dublin. It is not only a commuter connection.When one flies into Ireland from North American or Europe it is more than likely that one will land at Dublin Airport. If we are serious about attracting tourists to the north west to develop its economy and have balanced regional developments then we need a connecting flight between Derry and Dublin. The only way to do so is through some form of contribution, whatever that might be, or partnership with the Irish Government. I ask that the Minister meets airport management from the City of Derry Airport and listens to their case because there may be something that can be done to assist the airport further.

My final point is on Bus Éireann. The Minister will have heard from his colleagues the concerns expressed by persons who live in rural and urban Ireland about the loss of some bus routes and the threat to the Expressway service. Ministers must often talk to the Dáil or Seanad about issues that they have inherited. The Minister has inherited a situation whereby many of these routes were allowed to be privatised and opened to competition with private providers that cherry-picked the routes. I have no issue with private companies seeking to make a living and make a profit because that is what they do. We had a policy that allowed such a scenario. That is at the core of the sustainability of many of these routes. The policy must be revisited as part of this process. I ask the Minister to realise that this is not an industrial relations issue. The Minister has inherited a situation that arose as a result of a long-standing Government policy. I ask him to consider the long-term sustainability of these routes because they connect cities to regions. To resolve the matter we need an intervention and policy change at Government level. The Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government has talked about the new plan for 2040 and balanced regional development, just like every Government, investment and transport agency. If we are serious about implementing a plan then there must be an intervention to protect the routes in the interests of the public. I plead with the Minister to consider doing so.