Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, back to the Seanad. I am delighted to see him being recognised for his Trojan work over the years, with him now being a Minister of State. I wish him well in his term.

I wish to raise the issue of the A5. All of today's discussion has been around bus and rail - I will come back to the rail aspect in a bit - but following the national development plan roll-out post 2000, the one route left out was the A5. There has been much lobbying over the years and I have constantly been on this since the year 2000. Eventually, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair put money in place in 2007 and I remember being told by my two Oireachtas colleagues in Donegal in 2014 not to worry because the then minister, Conor Murphy, was in charge and this would be delivered. They instead pulled out of Stormont in 2016 on the back of an Irish Act that still has not been delivered and no one has put any beef on the bone on this.

We are now in a situation where, a little over a year ago, Sinn Féin called for the Government to provide funds for the A5. The Government has done that and it is very welcome but now, but this is a result of the incompetence of Sinn Féin and its ministers in Northern Ireland. I say "its ministers" because John O'Dowd must take more responsibility for this than the current minister, given that John O'Dowd is the man who signed off on it, knowing his own policy had been in place since 2022. It is telling that no Sinn Féin representatives are in the House today. It is telling that Pearse Doherty made a statement in the Dáil last week in which he lectured the Government on the need to spend more on rail but did not even mention the A5, which affects all of us in the north west because we have to cross the Border along the way.

It is despicable what is happening in Northern Ireland. It is time there was an approach at Government level with the UK Government. There is an awful lot of incompetence going on at present and a lack of accountability regarding our ministers in Stormont and their officials. The result of this is the A5 will be put back at least two or three years. Some of the rail Deputy Doherty called for on a cross-Border basis will also likely be pushed back to the same degree. This will leave us further behind and with fewer opportunities for development. People talk about the opportunity for balanced regional development but we certainly have not received that for many decades in the west and north west, and this situation will now prolong that situation. Some of those who portray themselves and act as though they want to see development are of the very party opposing it. It is disgraceful manoeuvring by Sinn Féin. I would like to see what our Government can do to rescue the situation because it is in need of rescuing.

With regard to rail, the House will know there is no connectivity in Donegal. The cheapest and smartest option for connectivity in Donegal, in the short term and in line with the all-island rail review, would be the upgrade of the Belfast-Derry route. This currently takes two to two and half hours of travel time. The shared island fund should be used for this . It is not that big of a stretch to have connectivity from Derry and back into Letterkenny in Donegal to bring rail services back to the county. This would give the whole north west connectivity to Belfast city, Newry, Dublin and all the other cities across the country, accommodating and adding to the all-island economy. I would welcome the Minister of State taking this back to the Department of Transport to see if it can be looked into.