Éamon Ó Cuív: Urges quick wins for Western Rail Corridor

Minister, I'm glad that you've made a reference to quick wins and the things that in my view could have been done in the last four years without any rate strategy, passing loops and so on, because all over the system we're getting caught with bottlenecks because trains can't pass each other and you can't increase the frequency. And I don't think it takes any great Einstein to work out that these things have to be dealt with and should have been dealt with and that we spend too much time cogitating about things and too little time just doing things. Are you saying that this year there will be a cleaning of the line preparatory to developing the railway line from Athenry to Claremorris? Maybe I misheard you, but I'd like a clear clarification on that, because I was looking at the timings for the reopening of the line to find. It's quite a tedious job, even though they were given all the money they needed. It's quite a slow job and the early jobs are clearing the lines, doing the assessment, working out what work needs to be done, starting and re-estating the bridges. So there's very little expenditure in the first few years. And I do think that there needs an absolute commitment as an early start for the Western Rail Corridor in view of the aim of balanced regional development. Thank you. I'll try and answer all. If I can start with Deputy Merkur, just on one point, funding. Because there is a reality, the next government's going to have to, and the one after it's going to have to recognize, we don't have the funding for everything. And we're going to have to make some hard choices. And in my mind, that choice should continue to be the prioritization of public transport, because the real benefit is, this brings us housing development, which is sustainable, more economic, more better, and within line of the national planning framework. You have to invest in the public transport to make our housing solutions work. And that means hard choices, but I think it should be the favoring of the rail and bus and active travel options. Deputy O'Keefe, I very much appreciate and support what you said is that we should focus initially, if we're looking at the next 10 years now, first five years, really focusing on the quick wins, passing loops, we can aim them all over the country, where you'd get enhancement of the existing capacity at a relatively low cost and relatively quick speed. My understanding, I thought the clearance had already started on the line in Claremont to Athenariah, I'll have to check that. But the experience from Foynes, actually, I'll just agree with you on this, is that you can work actually very quickly when you're working this way, because you're not caught on planning. And actually, I think I should have turned around that Foynes line really quickly. I hope we can do the same on the Western Rail corridor. In relation to Deputy Harkin, I absolutely accept the need to accelerate or to improve access to the Northwest. And actually, a lot of that investment on the mainline existing network I mentioned earlier, is designed and kind of will do that. In relation to Deputy Callan, I have a PQ on that issue of Claremont Griffin later on, so I might come back to it at that rather than using the time here. But finally, to Deputy Leiden, I mentioned those three cases, the Western Rail corridor, the rail line to Shannon, and the reopening of the Ross Lair line, because they're only the three only real new lines that we'll be putting in in this whole strategy. And I think it's important that they do come centre stage, because they're key strategic elements in rebalancing of the country. We have an imbalanced transport system. It is all investment in the East, not all investment, but a huge proportion of investment going into the East. We do need to balance it up, and I think those three sections, along with the other investments, in the Northwest as well as elsewhere, are going to be critical and do need to get priority, or else we won't get the housing in the balanced way, and we won't get the economic development in the balanced way. You still need to do business cases. It will still take, even if you're going ahead straight away, it is better to indicate the second part of this decade that those projects start to be built and delivered, because just in truth, the reality we all know is it takes time to get through our project appraisal system and our planning system. But that needs to accelerate, because those projects are needed as soon as we can possibly deliver them. All right.