Will road projects speed up when the Greens are voted out?

It's convenient to the whole country, drivers and otherwise, because there's a tram linking to Heuston Station. Spare us your utterly delusional understanding of how to run a country. National hospitals are located in the heart of major cities the world over. Great Ormonde Street isn't plonked in the middle of Yorkshire for good reason. I suppose you are one of those who wanted the hospital to be located in Athlone... a place where no hospital currently exists. St. James is where the expertise already exists and the public transport exists. It's not there to suit drivers. Drivers can use public transport. Ambulances can access the hospital easily if drivers move out of the way.

It's the 21st century people. Your 'vision' for a car dependent Ireland would be laughed away in any other country, bar maybe certain states in America. Try proposing your thoughts in any EU or liberal democracy. We're finally coming to the stage where this parochial silliness is slowly ending here too.

Why should it be near the M50? What about people who don't drive cars? Why must we constantly discriminate against those who can't drive or can't afford to have a car? When it was announced that the hospital would be located at St. James', loads of dopes were on the journal and other béal bocht mouthpieces wondering why the hospital wasn't being located in Athlone 'because it's right in the middle of Ireland'. This was repeated ad nauseam by people who seem to believe that any and every public service should be located in random places scattered throughout the country.

Come back to me with other children's hospitals being built to solely suit the needs of drivers rather than evidenced-based clinical need (colocating the NCH with maternity and adult expertise) and access to the public regardless of whether they own a car or not/can drive or not.

If you're relying on the creation of the suburban mess made of D24 in the 80s and 90s, you're as well to made a comedy sketch of it to boot.

Major hospitals with specific remits such as a children's hospital are still built in the heart of cities. I thought I'd remind you that there is such thing as ambulances. The biggest obstacle to ambulances is traffic. You commented earlier that we need more roads because the population is growing. Based on that logic, nobody would have decided that Paris, London, New York etc needed to move off the road to underground in the late 19th century.

Cars are great. I have one myself. I don't use it in cities. Cars are not good for cities. That's why cities that function properly invest in alternatives that everyone can use. This is not some novel eureka thought. Cities such as London and Paris impose disincentives such as congestion charges because otherwise the city would cease to function seamlessly. Once a city is in gridlock, it ceases to function effectively, (aka the M50 every morning), so cities lose time, money, tourism and business. It also impacts the quality of life of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people. People who move to a city expect high speed rapid transit first and foremost, not motorways. Land in cities is scarce and at a premium. Therefore, land, be it for housing, transport or otherwise, has to be utilised and developed to suit the needs of the masses, not just those privileged enough to be able to drive or afford a car. This is why European cities contrast so glaringly with those in the US. It's an ideological manifestation of values.

Cars are great for interurban transit and rural transport. However, their individual nature is antithetical to how a city operates or should operate, which attracts and caters to a huge range of socio-economic and other needs. I've said it before, Ireland's very recent experience of dense urban living is still very slow to catch on with some, mostly those of a certain age who often have limited international experience, and especially those who naively think a rural/small town lifestyle of 2 cars with a 2 storey house can be transposed to a city.

There's neither rhyme nor reason to your supposed logic, nor to this stupid thread. The road blitz of the 90s is over. It's over because most roads have been built. Bar the M20, N21, N24, the Donegal triangle, the N15 Sligo to Leitrim border, most roads are finished or will be finished within a matter of a few years. The notorious N5 will be effectively solved by 2024, for example. The focus needs to shift from building motorways to finalising these remaining projects, but only in tandem with a historic shift in focus away from roads and towards public and active transport. Removing bad bends on the secondary routes should also be prioritised as minor projects, eg. N71 in places, N63 Mountbellew to Roscommon, N52 through Offaly and Tipp, etc. That's it. The Greens' stance on the M20 won't have any influence on whether it's built or not. It was FG that cancelled it. It was FG that cancelled the Metro and innumerable other projects. These are the facts. The scale of cognitive dissonance among some people on here is astounding.

A lot of TD's never get their seats back and a lot of TD's do, such is the nature of elections.

Also, whether the greens are in govt or not makes little difference in terms of climate actions being taken. The last govt had a climate action plan that was thrown out by the courts as it didn't do enough and this govt was forced to come up with more solid plans and stricter implementation requirements and deadlines. This would have been done regardless of the greens being in power because we've signed up at an international level to do this.

Its been written into current legislation that the reductions must be met and any misses are loaded onto the next target period e.g. if they plan for 10% between 2020-2025 and 2025-2030 only achieve 3% in 2020-2025 then 17% becomes the new target for 2025-2030 and plans and actions are required to be adjusted accordingly.

So yeah, whoever is in govt will have no option but to follow through. That so few realise this, and instead like to paint the greens as some sort of boogeyman is honestly weird.

Genuine question, who are you going to blame if the greens are not in the next govt but the climate actions continue as planned? What about the govt after that one? I ask because these are decade long plans and in some cases, multi-decade, so while there may be tweaks and modifications to the methods, this is only going one way.