Ba mhaith liom ar dtús mo chomhghairdeas ollmhór a ghabháil le Catherine Connolly ar an mbua iontach a bhí aici an tseachtain seo caite. Guím gach rath uirthi. Déanaim comhbhrón le Sr. Stan. Laoch ab ea í a d'oibrigh go díograiseach ar son iad siúd a bhí gan dídean sa tír seo. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dílis. Déanaim cáineadh orthu siúd a chur an teach IPAS i nDroichead Átha trí thine. Ba bheag nár bhfuair páistí agus tuismitheoirí bás sa teach sin ar an oíche.

This morning, commuter traffic on the M3 going to Dublin was backed up well into County Meath. The journey for tens of thousands of people took two hours. Meath is the biggest commuter county in the country. It is the only county in the country where the majority of workers leave the county to go to work every single day. Some 90,000 people in Meath commute to work on a daily basis and 60,000 of those are forced to use cars due to the lack of a rail line. Navan is the biggest town in the country without a rail line at the moment. In 1994, Fianna Fáil's Noel Dempsey promised to build a rail line between Navan and Dublin. The delivery date slipped and slipped. We were promised to have it in 2015 but it was never built.

I am the chair of the Meath on Track campaign and the people of Meath have campaigned strongly for this over the years and yet we still do not have that rail line. In 2021, it was promised to us again. We were told that the building of the rail line would start by 2030 and it would be built by 2036. This promise was met with derision in County Meath, to be honest. It is typical horizon politics - so far in the distance that it never gets done. In 2036, it will be 42 years since the rail line was first promised by Fianna Fáil.

In 1862, the original Navan to Dublin rail line was built in three years with picks and shovels. Despite all the technology we have now, the wait for the project is now heading towards 42 years. It is incredibly glacial in its delivery.

The economic cost of congestion in the greater Dublin area is incredible. Some €336 million was the cost of it in 2024, according to the Department of Transport, and it is estimated that by 2040, congestion in the greater Dublin area will cost €1.5 billion. Studies have been done on congestion in European cities and Dublin is the worst in terms of time and cost. There have also been studies of the speed of traffic in Dublin at the moment. The average speed eight years ago was 12 km/h. The average speed of horse-drawn carriages in Dublin in the 19th century was 16 km/h. We currently in an incredible crisis in terms of infrastructure in the Dublin area.

Why is it that this Government cannot deliver infrastructure on time? Why is it that we have the slowest planning, permits, judicial reviews and tendering in the whole of the European Union in terms of such projects? When will the Navan to Dublin rail line be built? What will the Government do to change the glacial pace of infrastructure in this country?

I thank the Deputy. What I would say about transport specifically is that there has been a big uplift in the transport allocation for the next five years. Some €22 billion of the over €100 billion being invested in the next five years will be in transport, specifically to build more roads and ensure our public transport objectives are delivered. There is going to be a serious transformation of transport investment over the next five years.

The Deputy is correct in saying that additional allocations in themselves will do very little to change how we deliver infrastructure across our economy. That is why over the coming weeks we will publish a series of actions, to be implemented in 2026, which will accelerate the delivery of infrastructure across our economy. It means rebalancing regulation in our economy and reassessing a lot of the rules, processes and structures that are not working and are delaying decision-making and adding cost, rather than value, to the cost of projects when they come to be delivered and procured. We will introduce reforms from a legislative perspective on critical infrastructure and on trying to advance that in a greater and quicker way.

We will also be examining the roles of our regulators and ensuring there is a duty to co-operate across many of our regulators, which at the moment are a part of the sequencing of delays that undermine the delivery of infrastructure across our economy. I will, in the coming weeks, be able to show the difference that will make to the delivery of infrastructure.

The Deputy referenced the Navan rail line. There was a reduction in capital expenditure when the economy contracted and that contributed to delays for many of the projects the Deputy referenced. That was a part of the previous national development plan. Part of what we are trying to do now is to match sectoral investment plans in transport and other areas with new short timelines so we can better deliver transport infrastructure. The Minister for Transport, Deputy O'Brien, is working with the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, on a sectoral investment plan for transport in our economy. That will seek to match this very serious allocation. Nearly €1 of every €4 we will spend on capital over the next five years will be spent on transport, which is one of the biggest investments in public transport and our road network for many years.

Part of that is to try to match that with a credible pipeline of projects which we can deliver over a period of years while also trying to set out a new delivery mechanism into the early 2030s for projects that needs to go through planning and procurement. He will be able to set out further detail in terms of the transport sectoral investment plan. This new approach to infrastructural delivery is about rebalancing risk. The Deputy is often in here attacking public servants, politicians and others. People have a role in ensuring accountability where there is excessive spend on particular projects but it is also important we rebalance the risk appetite so that we address risk aversion in decision-making. That means we have to take extra-----

I thank the Minister.

-----risks when it comes to delivery of infrastructure and other projects across our economy.

I thank the Minister. Deputy Tóibín to respond.

The problem is that if one takes the future tense out of the Minister's statement there is very little the Government can say. The Minister has been in government for so long at this stage and these particular problems in planning, judicial reviews and tendering have not appeared out of nothing. They have been as a result of the Government's implementation.

One of the big frustrations that exists among commuters in this country is that, on one level, they are getting the stick of extra costs. Last year, commuters paid €1.9 billion in motor tax and VRT and they contributed €4.1 billion in fuel taxes. Just last week the Government put up the cost of tolls again on an M50 that commuters have paid €2.2 billion for already. Mind you, those two bridges cost €53 million to build in the first place. Those commuters have paid for those bridges over and over again and yet the Government is using this stick on those commuters by putting up that price again instead of using the carrot of providing the necessary public transport they want to be able to use. That is where the major frustration is. On one level, the Government cannot introduce and cannot develop infrastructure because the systems are grinding to a halt with bureaucracy and red tape-----

Thank you, Deputy.

-----while on another level the Government is using a stick to try to get people out of cars and that stick is impoverishing many people.

I acknowledge that in some instances there is excessive bureaucracy and red tape and we need to cut it, remove it and reform it. That is central to my work beyond what is happening in the national development plan. The Deputy is correct that we do need to radically reduce the timelines it takes to deliver critical projects and housing across our economy. There are too many layers and too many barriers to the delivery of that, and I acknowledge that in many of the commuter counties. I work with my colleague, Deputy Dempsey, on this, when it comes to the Navan rail line, and work on other priorities in Meath, Kildare, Wicklow, Louth and other commuter belt regions where many people have a long commute to work. Part of the transformation of our transport system in the next five years will be to ensure the project pipeline gets delivered more quickly because we have put a record level of allocation beside transport when it comes to the prioritisation we have given it.

When it comes to tolls, the contribution tolls make is to the maintenance of our national road network. Our national road network needs to be maintained to a standard and there is a cost to doing that. That is part of the position when it comes to the toll rates TII sets every year.