Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 March 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications

Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals

10:30 am

Mr. Fintan Towey:

That is finished. Second, a new package of measures is on the table which will extend liberalisation across Europe. The immediate implications that arise from the ending of the derogation are that we have to apply the regulatory model for a competitive framework. The major element of that is we have to ensure we have full accounting separation of the functions within Irish Rail that are related, on the one hand, to the network and its maintenance and, on the other, to the provision of train services. That has been implemented by the railway company. There is a range of further measures but two are of particular significance. One is that we need to establish an independent regulatory body responsible for economic regulation of the railway market and the second is we also have to establish an independent function to ensure the charges for access to railway tracks and the procedures for allocation of capacity of the rail network are carried out on a basis that is fully independent and does not confer advantage on the incumbent operator. Those are the measures we are working on implementing-----

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