I accept the Minister now sees the sense in the RPA proposal but the problem, as we saw this morning, is that the Taoiseach does not believe in it. He was asked specifically for his opinion of the Dublin metro plan and all he could say was that it was very expensive and how could we possibly pay for it, which means that it is dead in the water, so to speak, in Cabinet. In those circumstances, would the Minister not be better off getting a decision from the Cabinet? His Government colleagues would then have to face the reality of the other options we might have to pursue including, as the Minister said, linking the current Luas line in St. Stephen's Green?
Does the Minister believe that the alternative to a metro would be reversion to the original Luas proposal, which would see the two lines connecting and a third line heading north from O'Connell Street towards the airport? Given that in the past the Minister said that the Irish Rail option of a spur from the DART line is not feasible, will he agree that the next best option, if we cannot afford the metro, is that original Luas proposal?
The Minister prevaricated on this issue for a year. He said he had to "put them back through the hoops" on the figures but the reality is that those figures were confirmed a year ago. He has sat on them for a year and in that time 70,000 houses have been built. The longer we put off this decision, the more houses will be built alongside roadways instead of public transport lines, on which we do not know if the Government has a view. A planning issue arises here and every week the Minister waits is an extra thousand houses built in the wrong place. That is the real cost of the Minister's indecision on this issue over the past year.