Anthony Lawlor (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I hope that in six months' time I will be welcoming him to open the Sallins bypass and that by then the expansion of the N7 to three lanes will be finished. Every morning it has been namechecked on radio and television stations as being a bottleneck. By the end of this month or early in May I hope the three lanes will be open and the Sallins bypass will be open by the end of the year. I first brought up this project when I was in the Dáil. It would be very welcome to have the Minister down there to open that €110 million project.

I have asked TII and the NTA how we can make buses more efficient on that route, making better use of our motorways. I suggested the possibility of using the hard shoulder as a bus lane. A trial is taking place on the N4 from Maynooth towards Dublin. Something like that might also be considered for the N7. If we are saying we cannot do it because the existing roads are not wide enough, why do we not take one of the lanes and use it, not alone as a bus corridor, but also as a car-pooling lane, making it more efficient for people to travel.

I welcome the increased allocation to local authorities with Kildare County Council getting an additional 14%. That helps all the rural communities some of which have not had a road resurfaced for almost 50 years apart from bit of tar for to cover the potholes. I hope there will be further increases. Through the year the Minister may have surplus funding elsewhere and he might consider County Kildare as part of that.

We need to increase the rail capacity. We badly need additional carriages on the routes coming to Dublin from Kildare. We also need to increase the capacity of the lines by widening them. The four lines that currently go as far as Hazelhatch need to be extended as far as Kildare where the line splits. There is enormous opportunity for people to use those rail lines at the moment.

I very much welcome that companies such as Go-Ahead are taking over some of the routes from Bus Éireann. Go-Ahead is in consultation with the NTA regarding the timetable. It is important for people in the commuter area in Kildare to have an efficient service that runs on time. People frequently bitch about the bus not turning up on time. We all know the story about waiting for one bus to come along and suddenly four come together. I have been talking to Go-Ahead about more consistency. It is communicating with the commuters as to what they want. There should be linkages between the provincial buses and the link buses that are linking the communities around so that the link bus arrives just before the provincial bus departs.

I have been advocating for the greenway for a long time and I welcome the money allocated. The proposed Part 8 development for the Grand Canal greenway is going through the Kildare County Council planning process at the moment. It is important to have that link from Sallins into Naas. That would immediately link into the train station in Sallins. It is vital for attracting tourists to the midlands and east of the country.