Mr. Tom O'Mahony:

I will make two points on rail. First, there is a difference between Ireland and Europe and a consequent limited application of much of this to Ireland. This was recognised by the committee when it commented on the regulation. Within Europe, given its scale as one large continent where large rail lines can be run throughout, there is much more scope than there is in Ireland for having high-speed interoperable rail as an alternative to other methods of travel, in particular for moving freight. There is less scope in this country. To give the obvious example, we have seen the impact of the motorways on the rail services. My personal preference, if I need to go to Cork or elsewhere, is to travel by train because I can sit back and relax, do not have to concentrate on the road and can use my Wi-Fi and all that sort of thing. With the motorways now, however, travel times are such that one can make the journey as quickly as by train. As to moving freight, although there has been some degree of shift towards making slightly more use of rail for certain types, in most cases because the distances are so small the time and cost involved in loading the train and unloading it at the other end just do not work.

Iarnród Éireann is trying to compete with the motorways, and the very fast bus services that do very well because of them, by doing many kinds of promotional fares. Clearly, we would like to see a viable rail network maintained. To do this, the company must operate on a much tighter cost structure than was the case in the past. Much of what is happening in Irish Rail now, as in the other CIE companies, is about streamlining costs. Much of the automation that has occurred has reduced the need for previous numbers of staff so there is a lot of voluntary severance and so on. All of those things are necessary and the company is trying to do them as best it can to get to a level where it can compete with the express bus services and so on.

On opening up to competition and how that would apply to the railways, when the legislation relevant to us was introduced in 2008 which provided for the potential opening up of PSO services in bus and rail, the bus companies, Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann, were given a derogation until 2014 and Irish Rail was given a derogation until 2019. The then Government accepted, as does the current Government, that in the period post-2019 there exists a possibility that some services might be operated on a competitive basis. Of course it will depend on an operator being interested and willing to come into the relatively small market in Ireland to provide services. However, the possibility is there.