Senator John McGahon - speech from 23 Oct 2020

Minister, the Railway Accident Investigation Unit is the independent railway accident investigation organisation for Ireland and it essentially deals with investigations of incidents and accidents on the National Railway Network, the Dart, the Lewis, Industrial Railways and Heritage Railways and an investigation is carried out for the improvement of road of railway safety thereafter establishing the cause of the incidents with the ultimate view of producing safety recommendations which would effectively avoid similar types of accidents in the future and these investigations are entirely independent and are focused on rail railway safety improvement and that's the most important thing and since 2014 the Railway Accident Investigation powers for categories of rail are provided in secondary legislation and we've put in various SI's throughout it and the bill really addresses the point that the RAIU will from the 31st of October 2020 continue to have a statutory basis for accidents involving railways falling outside the new EU Directive i.e. essentially Lewis's and Heritage Railways and we have a number of major sections in the bill but I suppose one of the points that I really want to discuss today is Project 2040 and how that can really influence our railway infrastructure on the island of Ireland and at the minute if you looked at it and I got the train from Dundalk to Dublin for many years and at the minute I would really love to see huge and it's part of Project Ireland 2040 huge money being put into high speed rail