The Meath on Track campaign group is having a public meeting tonight Thursday 4th December at 7.30pm in the Newgrange Hotel in Navan.
Chairperson of the group, Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín said:
“It’s really important that as many as possible attend this meeting tonight. We have a situation in Meath where many are living in commuter hell, where parents are gone from their homes from 6am in the morning to well after 7pm in the evening. They are lucky to get home in time to put their kids to bed. Its adding to the anxiety of children to be separated from their parents for so long. Volunteerism is dying as many parents haven’t the time of the energy for community activities. The traffic disaster in the Greater Dublin area is grinding people down. The return journey for tens of thousands of people from Meath is now often taking 4.5 hours. Its heading towards a 5-hour return journey. Think about it, 20 hours a week commuting for a 40-hour working week!”
Deputy Tóibín continued: “Meath is the biggest commuter county in the country. It’s the only county in the country where the majority of workers leave the county to go to work. 90,000 Meath people commute to work. 60,000 of are forced to use cars for the lack of a rail line. Indeed, Navan is the largest town in the country without a rail line. In 1994 FF’s Noel Dempsey promised to build a rail line between Navan to Dublin. It Now being promised by Aisling Dempsey, Noel’s daughter. It’s become an intergenerational political promise. At the current rate of delivery, it will be 42 years from concept to completion. People will have started work in their 20s when it was announced and will be retired and drawing the pension before it is complete”.
“In 1862, the original Navan to Dublin Rail line was built in three years with picks and shovels. 42 years with all the technology that exists today and 3 years with picks and shovels in the 1860s. This week the government launched the National Development Plan Review. There was one mention of the Navan to Dublin Rail line in the whole document. The mention added nothing new in terms of its progress. It commits no money to the project. Bizarrely it talks about building stations, even though no route has been selected. The government is not listening. Some people in Meath are suggesting that to make the government listen there should be a toll strike, a refusal to pay tolls. Others say that the traffic should be blocked in Dublin because the government are blocking their traffic every morning. I don’t want to see disruption. The Minister for Transport should come to Meath tonight to listen to the people living in commuter hell!” concluded Tóibín.
