Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is about having confidence in the process. I agree that the restrictions meant that changes had to be made to the process. Irish Rail showed that it was listening to the concerns of Coolmine after the first consultation process. Although that has not solved all the problems, it has got us to this point. However, this is serious. People do not just want to know that one has listened, but also that one is listening. If there is a visible mute and a person is muted in a meeting where there should be engagement, that gives all the wrong messages.

The cost of making a submission on the railway order is €50. If this goes through in the planning application as part of the railway order, the community has to pay €50 for a submission. That is a huge amount of money. At present, the community is leading this, such as the people in Ashtown Stables, Navan Road Community Council and the community of Coolmine. It is too much pressure at a stressful point in everyone's lives, coming through Covid, during Covid and after Covid. The best thing to do is to extend this by another month and engage with them properly. If it is possible to do something similar to BusConnects, where there is a room that people can visit under Covid restrictions, with people fully vaccinated and managing the numbers, that might be a way to regain the confidence of this community.