Sunday, January 14, 2007

Fine Gael to prioritise Kildare rail in Government - Daly

Fine Gael in Government will ensure fast, high capacity, commuter rail services for Kildare, the Party’s Kildare South General Election candidate, Richard Daly, has said.

“Fine Gael will deliver this, not just promise it. We recognise the time for timid solutions is long past. We need the big investment in rail. Our population and our economy demand it. We will deliver on time and on budget.

“We also have to start thinking about early answers, at school transport solutions that would keep thousands of cars off our roads each morning. We need to look at innovative uses of rural school buses so they can offer additional transport solutions for more remote areas.

“This Government has never been short on promises, or press conferences or photo-calls. They enchant us with announcements like ‘an ambitious underground interconnector rail tunnel’. Yet, thousands of commuters are spending longer, and longer, in their cars.

“The gap has grown between the public transport places available and the public transport places needed in every year of the lifetime of this Government.

“The Government has no credibility on this issue. They have had their chance, had all the opportunities, and had all the money. They have simply failed to deliver.

“As new communities, and many new young families, settle further and further from Dublin, bereft in many cases of even a single bus, the demand for early delivery of clean, reliable and frequent public transport becomes ever more compelling.

“Fine Gael will build the rail-based high capacity solutions. But we simply cannot sit, in the meantime, on our hands and wait for them.

“Fine Gael will, immediately on entering Government, liberalise the bus market, in Dublin and in the other towns and cities, to dramatically increase capacity so we can provide services to growing populations and increase frequency on existing routes.”

Ends

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