Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-13
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Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central

I support the amendment. It is a commonsense amendment that requires transparency, openness and discussion. There is really important work to be done regarding infrastructure. We really need to get it right now. The Government is bringing forward a plan, which we support, but it is not going far enough. I will give a couple of examples. The point was made by a number of speakers about transparency and what projects go ahead in what areas.
I represent Cork North-Central. For over 25 years, there has been talk about a northern ring road. The southside of the city has a massive ring road, all the way from Ballincollig, into the tunnel, and out to Dunkettle. We have nothing on the northside. The question that people ask me about transparency and honesty is who made the decision to pull the northern ring road. Why was it made? Transparency is so important because this was part of a plan 20 years ago, and now it is not, and the Government has allocated a couple of hundred thousand euro to a project. People might say, "You are being parochial about the northern ring road, Tommy," but the northern ring road is key for the city, because if there is a crash in the tunnel or on the south ring road, there is chaos in Cork. It is vital infrastructure. How do I find out where that vital infrastructure is?
How do I get answers? How do we debate it? Who picks the projects? Are they picked on merit or are they picked because of who is in power or who the Minister or Taoiseach is? These are vital questions. That is why if we come in here and we have a debate, people can get answers and we can go back to our constituencies.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-13