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

Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

The Deputy is right; we can control the controllables. It is funded right the way up to planning and we will get it through planning. We often talk about the NDP going to 2030. Of the €104.25 billion investment, one quarter of that is for public transport. If we look out to 2035, the figure is €245 billion. Thanks to the hard work of our people and good economic management, we will have the capital to actually deliver these projects. By the way, I do not look at them just from an expenditure perspective. It is also about what they will deliver in economic terms. That investment will pay back in spades to the Exchequer. I know Deputy O'Rourke, Deputy Aisling Dempsey, the Minister, Deputy Helen McEntee, and the Minister of State, Deputy Thomas Byrne, have all been working very closely together, to be fair, advocating for the people of Meath on this and the difference that it will make. We will have this funded. What we have to do is really watch this project as it moves through. Meath is in the greater Dublin area framework of the transport investment strategy and it is listed in the NPD. Let us get a consultation done, get people engaged with it, get it into planning, get it out of planning by 2029, and get on with building this transformational project.

---

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