I thank the Minister for being here and for facilitating this discussion today. I commend him and his Department on the work done to date in trying to speed up the delivery of key infrastructure projects. Setting up the accelerating infrastructure task force and the action plan that emerged from that with 30 specific action points are very welcome. This progress is welcome. I want to focus today on transport infrastructure in particular. As the Minister knows, our road network is choked with traffic congestion in many of our urban areas, particularly in the morning and evening peak times. Even outside these hours we come across heavy congestion on our road network. It is debilitating for any economy to have a road network choked with traffic to the extent that we now are, not to mention the impact on people's everyday lives. We have to come up with measures to reduce this congestion. We have to invest our way out of it in terms of infrastructure. Of course, we need to provide people with alternatives to our road network, such as better and improved public transport and of course continued investment in our active travel routes across the country. We also need to invest in our road network. We need to make our road junctions more efficient. We need to invest and we need to design and build new roads where necessary. We have to take a broad approach to this. There is no single answer to reducing the congestion we experience on our road network on a daily basis. I want to focus on the transportation aspect in Cork. Unfortunately, we have ongoing issues with the reliability of our bus service and the slow roll-out of BusConnects. This is something that I and other Deputies have raised continually to see if we can make progress on this. The Cork Luas project will be transformational for Cork city and is something the city and its people deserve. An 18 km stretch of light rail serving 25 different stops along the way will be transformative and make huge difference but we need to speed up the delivery of this project. It has been estimated it could take up to ten years for this to be constructed and become operational, which is far too long. A final preferred route is due to be announced in the coming months. I ask the Minister and his Department to do everything possible to ensure this project progresses at pace because we simply need it to happen in Cork for everyday life and also from an economic point of view. It is highly regrettable and a missed opportunity that the Cork Luas project will not serve Cork Airport. This is something we need to look at even at this late stage because connectivity to the airport and the city centre is critically important. We also need to consider the route in the context of the large residential areas on the southern side of the city.

Sentiment score: 0.09