Mr. Frank Allen:

I thank Senator Feighan for his questions. The Sligo line is a critically important line on which passenger numbers are good. I agree with the Senator that unless we provide competitive journey times, people will return to using their cars. I was not aware that the journey time from Sligo to Dublin is three hours. In regard to journey times, in almost all cases the issue is one of fixed infrastructure. The work we are doing in terms of the rail review involves ensuring the maintenance and upgrade of fixed infrastructure, including cleaning the ballasts and removing any temporary speed restrictions in place and, closer to the cities, ensuring that the regulation of journeys is such that they are not conflicting with one another. I do not know why the Sligo-Dublin journey takes three hours but I agree that three hours is a long time. For it to be competitive with private transport, I would need to examine what changes could be made to the fixed infrastructure to ensure provision of a more competitive journey time. I do not disagree with the point made by the Senator.

I do not have an answer to it here and now, but we will look into the matter and get back to the Senator about it to see what can be done.

Parking charges at railway stations are an annoyance for some people, and I apologise that an issue arose with clamping and if there was a problem with the texting system. However, in our financial circumstances, small though the payment is to park a car at a railway station, we need to try to maintain whatever sources of income we can as long as that charging remains fair. When I see sometimes what I pay for commercial parking in many other places, I believe the charges at railway stations are quite moderate and also discourage people from leaving their cars there over extended periods. If the Senator is asking me whether we could come up with a policy not to charge at small railway stations, it would be difficult, even though the loss would not be enormous. It would be difficult to defend not charging at some stations while charging at others, so-----