Not to worry Mark. The whole thing has been a pain, and the irony of the situation is that it wasn't a negative report as such. The best sound bytes were the negative ones unfortunately.
As these things go with the finance-babble of financial vs economic, it was quite good esp from the ridership perspective.
Its just been a pain in the ass that a casual remark or two has put in train a series of events which have managed to give the impression that it is a pet political project, which history shows it is not. And frankly, it would be so much easier to push for if it was a pet political project.
There was a history of broken promises on the mot site which showed that this could not be the case - the railway is only being looked at way after every other project has been advanced. The campaign for passenger rail services to Navan goes back to 1981!
I really do think it a strong possibility that the Transport 21 funding comment that led to this, and yes I'd imagine that it was politically inconvienient. Noel Dempsey has been taking flak over the non delivery of the railway for years in his own backyard so I'd imagine that whatever led to this, it had more likely than not more to do with the bigger picture of Transport 21 than Meath
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