Seán Kenny (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I pay tribute to West-on-Track for its presentation which is idealistic. As somebody who originally comes from the west, I have a certain affinity with the proposals made, although the harsh realities are that everything must have a business case to back it up.

On reopening the railway line between Athenry and Claremorris, what is the condition of the track? Is it still intact? Have developments taken place across it in some places? Would there be problems in reopening it?

On the railway line from Athenry to Limerick and Ennis, I read somewhere that people travelling from Galway to Ennis or Limerick would get there a lot faster by using bus services than by travelling by train from Galway via Athenry to Limerick. That is one of the disadvantages. I also understand speed restrictions on the line limit the speed at which trains can travel, which makes the journey longer.

With regard to the freight business, most of our freight is to the United Kingdom, our main business partner, and passes through Dublin Port. The Dublin Port tunnel was opened seven or eight years ago to remove all of the heavy traffic from city roads and direct it via the M50 to the port. Heavy goods vehicles are banned from travelling through the city and must use the tunnel. In some ways, this has dealt with the traffic problem. Some years ago the Dublin Port Company built a new container terminal in the south port, but the railhead and rail terminal are located in the north port. To a large extent, this was the death knell for rail freight services. The main competitor for freight business is the road haulage industry which is a very strong lobby and might have had a say in the building of the new container terminal in the south port.

The ideas about heritage travel and tourism on the reopened lines are certainly worthy. In parts of Wales travelling on old lines is part of the tourism experience. Perhaps this is a model which might be examined. The main problems bring us back to what Irish Rail has told us about the availability of funding.