Dublin Commuter Coalition calls on Transport Minister for clarity and commitment on major transport investments

The future of several planned essential infrastructural investments in Dublin's transport network are in jeopardy due to a complete absence of firm Government commitment. The current Dublin Metropolitan Area Transport Strategy calls for dozens of major and minor schemes in order to alleviate congestion in the capital.

Each of these schemes are dependent on and interlinked with each other; this strategy would represent the 'joined-up thinking' that is so often called for by the Irish public. However, the Government has repeatedly failed to reliably allocate the funding which is required to deliver their own strategy. Instead, the people of Dublin and its surrounding area have had various parts of this strategy announced, re-announced, and brought forward as if they were concert times in Malahide and not critical pieces of infrastructure on which the future of our city and its economy depend.

The Minister's recent reported comments on bringing forward the timeline to deliver Finglas Luas are just some in a long series of idle discussions with the media and his colleagues in the Dáil which are incredibly misleading to the public. The National Development Plan (NDP) and the Department of Transport’s 'Sectoral Investment Plan' do not contain the promised funding despite a clear and desperate need for widespread delivery. Minister O’Brien has frequently contradicted his department’s plans publicly, destroying industry and public confidence in the Government’s commitment to said plans.

Instead of constantly changing the status of funding commitments on a whim, the Minister must negotiate and release a revised NDP which reflects his discussions with the media and parliamentarians. Concrete funding must be made available to provide confidence to the builders who will construct these projects and the citizens who will use them that they will actually be delivered.

His department should publish a single, simple list of each major and minor piece of transport infrastructure that is planned; its current status in clear language; and the actual funding that has been allocated to it in the NDP. If this were released it would quickly become clear that the same euro has been promised to multiple projects at multiple times.

Lochlann Gallagher, Public Relations Officer of the Dublin Commuter Coalition said “The Minister must provide clarity. His wishy-washy comments only cost us all in the time we will continue to waste in traffic, on late buses, and on packed trains where we learn what it is like to be a sardine. Our city is choking under the weight of a traffic problem solved by a strategy only he has the ability to deliver.”