Éamon Ó Cuív Urges Rail Freight and Investment for Ireland's West

Minister, I am reassured by what you have said, I have to say that. I think it is also very important that we focus on that statement that we hear every day about balanced regional development, every plan, but it is very, very rarely implemented in terms of the west-northwest. Minister, you recently announced an extra four stations on the Lewis line, I think a few hundred million, but what is a few hundred million up in Dublin? You also announced the electrification of the line out to Maynooth, not a few, Bob. You announced that we are going to look at high-speed rail from Dublin to Belfast, Dublin to Cork, Dublin to Irmerick, nothing for the west of Ireland. Minister, I think we could call this the Lazarus line, not Lazarus, but the guy that was at the gate and couldn't get the food. Could you drop a few, Bob, our way? Now, when you look at the figures, you see that Athenrae is doing very well, because there is a reasonable frequency of trains in the morning into town, in other words, there is a huge commuter demand. The population of Toome is twice that, Athenrae, the population of Casa Barra is three times it. There are plenty of people in these towns that commute to Galway. Yes, you can make it quicker to about 10 miles from Galway in the morning by car, but it is the last three, four, five, six miles, depending on the morning, that hold you up. That is where trains go, as you know. Minister, it is time for decisions, not for talk, and we are just looking for a few, Bob, for the west of Ireland. Minister, please. Minister, all those investments in public transport in Dublin make sense, and they have to make sense. You cannot proceed unless you have a real good business case, and we need the same in terms of rail investment in the west. The reason I mentioned that freight issue, and I mentioned it in various meetings I have had with various deputies, is because if we try and win this project on the base of it being a commuting route from Toome or Clare Morris into Galway, the numbers will be very difficult to argue to win. But if you look at it in a bigger, wider strategic context of economic development, and particularly passenger rail services coming on the back, I believe, of the real key strategic benefit from this, which will be an industrial rail freight capability, which will bring employment manufacturing to this region, which has clean power, clean water, highly skilled manufacturing workforce, that is when it starts to make sense. I will have to be honest, none of the reports to date, in my mind, are looking at it in that broader context. No one has really asked a big 20, 30 year industrial development question around what we need to do in the north west, and I think that is good for the whole country. That is not just good for the people of the west, that brings income, that brings tax base, that brings balanced regional development, so that is not a Dublin versus anyone. That makes logical industrial development policy sense to me. It means the IDA can go abroad to say, if you want really high quality, guaranteed, low cost energy, high quality water supplies, really good workforce, with rail connectivity to an international port that allows you to ship your goods anywhere around the world. And you have a choice, you can go to Fiennes or you could go down to Waterford, because this actually, as part of a spine, gives you that western spine right away. The need for that is shown by the fact that I understand, and these are the questions we need to ask, are there constraints at the moment on the Balanagh Dublin Waterford rail freight services? I think there may be. It is those questions we need to ask to make the business case for a national freight rail freight strategy. Now some people say, and the reports are saying, that rail freight won't work in Ireland. I don't believe, I certainly, I question that. Thank you Minister. We're all right. And the question is, if you put it in a wider 30, 40 year climate context, where are we going to go? Do we want large scale manufacturing? I think we do. We're good at it. We've done it before. We did it in Asahi. We do it in Balanagh. Why not in Castlebar, or in Westport, or in all the other stations along that line, including Toome or Athenai? Toome used to have an industrial rail freight based system. We've seen it work in Toome. That will make sense more than the Toome commuting routes, because to be honest, you can do a bus route from Toome into Galway. That will give you equally good service. So it's the rail freight one I think wins the case here. I think. We need to look at it. Thank you Minister.