Transport Minister Noel Dempsey has stated that a train service will run between Dublin and Navan by 2016, despite the project not being mentioned in the revised capital spending programme Asked about major projects outside Dublin, the Minister said 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. The Minister 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. According to Fine Gael’s deputy transport spokesman Shane McEntee, 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”. |
