Cathaoirleach of the Meath on Track Campaign Peadar Tóibín TD has announced that there will be a Meath on Track Public Meeting this Monday the 13th of February at 8pm in the Newgrange Hotel in Navan. The announcement of the meeting comes after the Minister stated that the Navan to Dublin Rail Line will be included the National Development Plan.
He told Meath Live, “It is good news that our project has been included in the National Development Plan. This is a result of people power. There has been a lot of work done by the Meath on Track Campaign to put serious pressure on the government on this issue in the run up to this decision. The importance of this piece of infrastructure to the county cannot be overstated”.
“But we have been here before. FF governments in the past promised that the Rail Line would be built by 2015. The rail line has been kicked around as a political football for so long now that many people are cynical on the government’s approach. Despite the project being in the NDP, the government have still not committed to it financially. We cannot take the governments word on this until money is ring fenced for the job. Also the time scale for delivery is not acceptable. We need the rail line now not in 2036”.
“This morning the majority of workers in Meath left the county today to go to work outside the county, this happens in no other county, in the country, Meath people commute further than any other county, indeed Navan is the largest town in the country without a rail line. Tens of thousands of people in Meath are living in commuting hell, spending 2 and 3 hours stuck in traffic. All of this must change for the physical and mental wellbeing of the county and for the economic health of Meath”.
“We in the Meath on Track Campaign will not accept the government dragging their heals on it. We need to see a cast iron commitment, a start date and ring-fenced funding. And we need to see that now. I urge the people of Meath to join us on Monday night at the public meeting to ramp up the pressure on the government to get the Rail line built on time”.
