Mr. Frank Allen:

I thank the Deputy. She referred to the rail review and its clear conclusions on underfunding. The rail review did not say that there are safety issues today. However, it recognised that there has been underfunding and deferred maintenance and that Iarnród Éireann has responded to that by placing temporary speed restrictions on certain routes to ensure we are not compromising safety. While I agree absolutely that there is a serious issue with the infrastructure, making sure that we have competitive journey times and that we deal with overcrowding, an issue I will deal with in a moment, that has not come about at the expense of passenger safety, the safety of staff or anything such as that.