Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications

Western Rail Corridor: Discussion

9:30 am

Mr. Don Cunningham:

I will try to answer the question on the viability of the Dunboyne route. It is true that the Dunboyne route has not been as successful, and I think a lot of that was as a result of the recession and development plans that were not carried out. It was, if I may say, putting in the infrastructure ahead of the development. While currently the route is loss-making, we do believe it has good potential in terms of the recession ending and green shoots appearing in the national economy. With proper co-ordinated planning, if development is co-ordinated along the routes where infrastructure such as the Dunboyne line is, we would certainly see that turnaround in terms of passenger numbers and growth potential. It is something we have discussed with the NTA and they are aligned with us in that regard.

With regard to the Navan-Kingscourt line, as Deputy McEntee has mentioned, we are in discussions with the local authorities and, as we mentioned in our presentation, we are very happy to work with anybody in terms of the development and use of the line in order to protect it.

With regard to diverting funding from lifting tracks and sleepers, often we find it is not economical to do so, and if we did and were able to sell them off, unfortunately we would need to put the resulting funds into the great deficit that we have at the minute, which was alluded to earlier. Unfortunately, while it does protect our route, we are underfunded, and our objective at the minute is really to focus on supporting the current network that we have, so it would be very difficult for us to transfer funds towards other initiatives. We are just not in a financial position to do so. If I may add - this is relevant to our colleagues from West-on-Track - it is very much the socioeconomic case which shows great benefits in terms of the cost benefit ratio and so on. Unfortunately, our focus has to be on the financial impact of Iarnród Éireann as a business entity. While the socioeconomic impacts are great, it is a national issue rather than an issue that Iarnród Éireann can deal with.

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