MINISTER FOR Transport Noel Dempsey has insisted a train service will run between Dublin and Navan by 2016, despite the project not being mentioned in the revised capital spending programme.
Asked if major projects outside Dublin had been put on hold following the Government’s announcement on Monday of a €39 billion investment plan, Mr Dempsey insisted construction on the railway link would go ahead once planning permission was granted.
“Western Rail Corridor phase two is not put on the long finger. Navan rail line [is] not put on the long finger despite reports to the contrary . . . They are not on hold.
“The next stage for the Navan rail line is that they submit their planning permission, their railway order. I’m assured by CIÉ that that will be lodged in the first half of next year. I’m not sure how long it will take to get through the planning stage bit once it gets through the planning process construction will start immediately,” he said.
Mr Dempsey was speaking in Limerick at the opening of the new €660 million tunnel under the river Shannon, which is designed to take up to 40,000 vehicles a day from Limerick city centre while improving access to Shannon airport, Galway, Cork, Kerry and Dublin.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen was asked if the Limerick tunnel would be the last big spending project to be carried out in the west of Ireland for some time. He said this was not a “proper analysis of the full spend”.
Mr Cowen said: “We have to find the balance between the need to make strategic investments which bring a return for the country but also seek to deal with the regional issues. But it’s not a question of dividing about money in a mathematical way, it’s about seeing what are the priorities.”
Mr Cowen said the Government was still investing almost €6 billion in continuing road improvements, not only on major works like the Atlantic Road Corridor but also on the regional and county road system.
“In addition to that we will see significant investment in our public transport system beginning with the major investments in Dublin, our capital city,” he said.
“While we have very serious budgetary issues to address, and not that I would minimise them in any way, we have to continue to invest in our people, invest in our infrastructure, provide the ways and means by which we can have an economy that operates more efficiently.”
Fine Gael’s deputy transport spokesman Shane McEntee insisted no funding had been allocated to the Dublin to Navan railway link and the project had been dropped. “I would love to sit down with the Minister and get a full explanation of the funding proposals. But I just can’t see he’s going to pay for it. There’s no money set aside in the Government coffers,” Mr McEntee said.
“Is he planning to pay for it with Monopoly money?” Mr McEntee said “scores of projects” had been dropped in the Infrastructure Investment Priorities plan.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael’s communications spokesman Leo Varadkar described the claim that 270,000 jobs could be created by the capital investment plan as “complete codology”.
The Labour Party’s spokesman on housing Ciarán Lynch accused Ministers of being “hell-bent on outsourcing the provision of social housing to their developer pals”.
He said “current and future housing provision is to be met almost entirely by leasing existing housing stock from builders and developers”.