[Navan Junction]

I'd agree with leaving it.

The point of the matter is that the project and every other project in Transport 21 should be rigourously examined.

The only concern I'd have is that rigourous examination was misinterpreted as resistance, but that is no reason not to debate it.

Just to adress a couple of points - nobody has ever seen the Meath project ever shown any favouritism at a political level from the county no matter whether the politician in question was Mary Wallace, John Bruton or Noel Dempsey.

I think the report is much stronger than the doomsayer headline intro thrown out there by IÉ at the presentation.

I would have thought once the decision was taken to spend €450m on a line at today's prices was made two years ago, the only real question after that was whether it would be a success in terms of passengers and covering it's costs.

The answer in the report was a firm yes to both.

Just to mention that an error was made in respect of the Section 49 levies in the report - they limited their radius to 1km around the stations.

Clearly the station in Dunshaughlin will be about that from the centre of town, and Navan is already developed within the 1km radius in Navan town.

Effectively the consultants inexplicably ignored any real potential for a comprehensive levy scheme.

There is more than a possability that MCC constrained the levy scheme which provoked IÉ into a negative headline intro. There is more to this than meets the eye, but what it is not clear.

The report did not come to a negative conclusion - even Midleton and Dunboyne are not expected to repay their build costs beyond the levy contribution level