Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to be disrespectful to the Minister for Education and I thank her for coming in to deliver the message from the Minister for Transport. Given that confidence has been shaken so badly in the last few days, what we need is something more definitive than ambition. We have been listening to ambition since the 1970s. The Minister laid out the timelines and how they have slipped already, long before the Irish Mail on Sundaytold us what they think they know.

The railway order application was supposed to have first been applied for in the third quarter of 2019. We are now being told that the work for the application is still not finalised. You would have to wonder what, in God's name, is causing the delay. I know that when the public consultation finished in 2018, there were objections raised by concerned residents about small issues that needed to be tweaked, hence the report that we got from TII only two weeks ago on its response to those concerns. I commend TII, because it really did listen and it is acting on people's concerns.

Here we are now, two full years after we were supposed to be applying for the railway order, saying that the work is not complete and we cannot submit a planning application until that work is complete. What we need to hear from the Minister for Transport, and we need to hear it soon, is when that application will be finished. When will the business case actually be accepted so that we can move to the stage where we know we are secure with money? When will the planning permission application actually be submitted to An Bord Pleanála? I am not talking about some wishy-washy hopefulness for the future. I am asking for actual dates so we can restore the confidence that the people of north Dublin have in delivering this project on behalf of this Government.