That's politics for ya, and that's politicians. In general, they don't like public transport of any sorts (unless it can be privatised), so you are swimming against the current whenever any type of push is amde for improvements.
Like Shakespeare's whited sepulchre, flash new diesel trains, carparks and station upgrades are just cosmetic efforts to hide the fact that we aren't really broadening our railway in any great hurry, not even in capacity terms
At one stage of the state's existence, huge sums of money were poured into the railway. Most of it was eaten up in the dieselisation of the fleet, and much of it was wasted as staff numbers on trains remained at the same levels as on the more labour intensive steam trains
Anyway IÉ aren't hungry for network expansion and neither are politicians, unless they are given no choice by public demand.
That really is the key to whether Dempsey delivers or not. Not whether IÉ say they want to do it, not what any of us say here, not what any politicians think.
If enough voters get pissed off, and if enough of an impact is made on the politicians by the voting public then you'll see action.
The Navan railway is a typical football type issue
At the end of the day if the people of Meath demand the railway, chances are they will get it (at some point). In that respect, Noel Dempsey is irrelevant other than whether he feels sufficiently pressurised to act.
And that is down to the voters of the county. It's good sport debating whether he will or will not deliver, but at the end of the day he'll do what he has to do, and political form says polticians do no more than they have to.
It just depends on what the commuters in Meath are prepared to settle for. The Blanch N3/M50 interchange will solve the problem of today, but one thing we know is that nature hates a vacuum and commuting patterns will change to eat that capacity up as quickly as possible.
And then we'll be back to looking at how we can get people through Blanchardstown once again, and the only answer this time will be the railway.
Fundamentally, what is wrong with the N3 Meath situation is that despite being the busiest bus corridor in Ireland, it is still basically a public transport wasteland.
The M50 upgrade will ease conjestion in the short term, but traffic volumes on the M50 will result in traffic cascading back onto the N3 again in the not too distant future after it opens, and traffic will continue to grow on the N3, partially from the return of all of the Navan/Kells/north Meath commuters that go on a mystery tour cross country to the N2 at the moment and partially through growth.
Either way, the railway has a future in Meath. We can take a snapshot of the day that the M50 upgrade is completed and the M3 opens. Of course everyone will think life is good on that day and for while after it.
But that changes, it always does when it comes to the bottlenecks around Dublin. Capacity won't last for long where the M50 and it's approaches are concerned.
It's not down to Dempsey whether this happens. It will happen because it has to happen. The question is when, and whether it is Dempsey that delivers it, or some other politician
That again is down to the people of Meath
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