Mr. Howard Knott:

To respond briefly to the Deputy with regard to marketing, fundamentally I would not disagree with a word he said. When we started this railway group six and a half years ago our intention was to make people aware that the railway lines existed and that they could be used. With the collective involvement of ourselves, our manufacturing members, Iarnród Éireann, the ports, the Department and a number of Government agencies, there has been a degree of success. The existing Iarnród Éireann targets for freight development looked at trebling the figure over a period of years. It is a small figure, but a trebling of freight development is significant.

The way in which the model used by Iarnród Éireann has been developed, whereby it charters trains to private companies, or to Coillte or Tara Mines, for them to on-sell the capacity on those trains works extremely well. It gives Iarnród Éireann security in terms of its revenue. It moves the risk further down the line, and people have been willing to accept that risk. There is a challenge in that when we talk to people who take that risk - the freight forwarders, DFDS Logistics or IWT - they say that the only problem is that they cannot find exporters who are interested in using the service, and we then ask them if they are marketing correctly. All I can say on that is that we are doing our very best with interest groups, particularly in the west, to get the message across that these services currently exist. They have proven value, as has been demonstrated through experience. More services could be introduced. It is a matter of people coming to the font and saying they are interested in talking to us about it. To do so, a company does not necessarily have to be the biggest company in the world with the biggest single traffic flow. It can hire one wagon on a chartered train. It might be the case that if a train is pulling 17 wagons it loses money but if it is pulling 18 wagons it is making money. Therefore, the wagon that a company hires could be very valuable.

If any message is to go out from our engagement today it is that companies should not despair - quite the opposite. They should contact Iarnród Éireann, their freight-forwarding companies and theirs hauliers and ask them about using the train. They should examine that possibility and the issues involved and consider opting for it.