Rail Network
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-26
============================================================

Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

The Deputy is right and I have no issue whatsoever with him raising this matter regularly. I do not want any slippage on it. The Navan rail line will be absolutely transformational in terms of quality of life, the environment and the economy. It will be a major piece of infrastructure to deliver. All I am interested in doing is making sure we hit those timeframes. In the NDP, there are major projects like MetroLink which has gone on for years and will start construction next year. There is DART+ and all of the various things. We have talked about quality bus corridors. There is major investment in public transport, and rightly so. I am keeping a really close eye on the Navan project and I want the public consultation out by the end of quarter 2. I take the Deputy's point that whenever it comes out, people will be very interested in it.
Regarding the timelines, we are dependent on planning. For some of those elements, we have a better planning system now. Obviously, I hope we do not get objections and various things like that but let us control what we can control. For the public consultation piece on the preferred route, we are aiming for the middle of year, that is, the end of quarter 2 or very early quarter 3 if there is any slippage but it has to be the middle of this year. I will certainly keep the Deputy informed of progress.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-26