Sir, – Recently I attended a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport where a local campaigning group made a superb case against the current proposals for Metrolink and for real investment in transport, in particular for the western suburbs of our capital city. Representatives from the proposer of the plan, the National Transport Authority (NTA), were not present. Later in the afternoon the NTA made its case separately and in the absence of the residents’ group. Therein lies the core problem. No one talked to each other. In the real world, people involved in an issue sit down, discuss and try and reach agreement.
Instead in Dublin we have at least 65 statutory bodies all competing for their slice of the action.
The case for an accountable “Dublin Transport Authority” to develop and provide an agreed, integrated transport plan for Dublin was never so encapsulated for me than the 75 minutes of that meeting where no one listened – except maybe the nine TDs and one Senator who attended, but who, at the outset, baldly stated, without any irony, that they had no power on the issue. – Yours, etc,
Cllr DERMOT LACEY,
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Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.