Mr. Jim Meade:

Along with my colleague, Mr. Colin Hedderly, I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for their invitation to attend to discuss the topics of flooding at Ballycar and opportunities for heavy rail investment. Before I directly address the two issues, I will give the committee a brief snapshot of Iarnród Éireann today - our services and service outlook for the future. Our team of more than 3,800 colleagues maintains a network of just over 2,200 km of rail; operates 4,300 services each week; carries just over 900,000 customers per week, with numbers growing; operates 144 stations across the network; transports 100 million tonne-kilometres of freight by rail; and brings 2.3 million tonnes of freight and 900,000 passengers through Rosslare Europort annually, for which we are the port authority. After an extraordinarily challenging decade, in 2017 we equalled our previous record number of customers at 45.5 million passenger journeys for the year, and 2018 will undoubtedly see a new record high. Our funding shortfall, while not fully resolved, and while the accumulated impact remains, has been reduced significantly, and the commitment in the national development plan to bridge the shortfall completely by 2021 is very welcome as it will give us the foundation on which to play the fullest role possible in the future. We are ambitious for our rail service and for how it can deliver solutions to congestion and environmental sustainability for Ireland. I will address this further as we look at opportunities for heavy rail.

As chief executive of Iarnród Éireann, as a former district manager in Limerick whose area of responsibility covered the Limerick-to-Ennis line and as a Clareman who lives close to Ballycar, I am acutely aware of the impact of recurring flooding at Ballycar on our customers and services. We are all aware of the unique hydraulic constraints which have been identified in the Ballycar Lough catchment. The underground section of the Ballycar Lough outlet channel is the main hydraulic constraint on the Ballycar Lough drainage system. This restricts outflow and thus causes flow backup and flooding in the vicinity of the lough. The Ballycar Lough catchment is a very slow response type catchment owing to the mild nature of the topography. Diversion of the Rosroe Lough catchment flow to the Ballycar Lough catchment increased the flows in channels within the Ballycar Lough system. The stream channels do not have adequate capacity to deal with the increased flow, and the inadequate capacity of the existing bridges and culverts located at various locations on the drainage system also restrict flow.

Without delving too much into history, it should be noted that while the railway line has been in existence and operational since 1859, no flooding was recorded prior to 1930, the year after the Rosroe Lough catchment diversion was undertaken by the Office of Public Works. The 1930 flooding was the first of 17 flooding closures to have occurred since. That five of these closures have taken place in the past decade illustrates how climatic factors are increasing both the frequency and severity of flooding, particularly as the line was raised by 0.7 m, or approximately 2 ft 6 in. in old money, in three separate works programmes between 1984 and 2000. The most prolonged flooding event occurred from December 2015 to May 2016, with a peak flood level of 1.4 m over the rail, while the most severe in 2013 saw flooding peak at 1.9 m over the rail. The flooding event earlier this year saw the line close for seven weeks from late January.

In 2011, following engagement with the Department of Transport, the OPW and Clare County Council, Iarnród Éireann commissioned a study by RPS to examine potential flooding alleviation options. The consultants and Iarnród Éireann worked closely with the OPW in particular in undertaking the study. The study, which has been provided to the committee, identified five potential flood alleviation options, numbered 1 to 5, with three flood flow discharge routes, A to C. The optimum solution which, as well as alleviating flooding impacting on the railway line, ensures that flooding risks in other areas such as Newmarket-on-Fergus are not worsened was option 1C, namely a 1.5 m diameter piped culvert, with inflow to and outflow from Lough Gash via the existing inflow and outflow stream channels. It is Iarnród Éireann's position that this approach should be pursued jointly with the OPW and Clare County Council, and that just as the railway is not the cause of the flooding, the solution is one that requires a more holistic approach than a focus on the railway line alone, given the potential impact on the wider catchment and the expertise of the agencies involved.

In the absence of progress on the optimum solution, Iarnród Éireann has identified an option of track raising which will reduce the probability of line closures. The cost of this solution is in the order of €10 million and involves raising the track by 1.2 m.

The proposal will not resolve the issue, however, and would merely reduce the frequency of flooding events to approximately a quarter of the current level and reduce the length of individual closures. Therefore, the option is not as attractive as the optimal solution I have outlined, not to mention the potential worsening of flood levels as the impacts of climate change continue.

I will now discuss investment in the rail network. Both the National Development Plan 2018-2027 and the national planning framework, Project Ireland 2040, provide for significant rail investment and the expansion of our role in meeting the transport needs of Ireland over the coming decades. While the NDP explicitly details funding of €2 billion over a decade for what has been referred to as the DART expansion programme, this refers to the physical location of these works. The benefits of this programme are national and network wide. Put simply, it will allow us to operate more trains with more capacity on all radial routes on the national network. It includes meeting the steady state maintenance and renewal requirements of the network by 2021; delivery of the national train control centre to maximise the capacity and performance of the existing network; non-tunnel elements of the DART expansion, including increasing the capacity of key rail corridors such as Cherry Orchard to Heuston station, which will benefit all Heuston intercity routes, and Maynooth, which will benefit the Sligo line; the targeting of improved inner-city journey times on the Dublin to Belfast, Dublin to Cork and the Limerick and Galway routes, with knock-on benefits for Kerry, Westport and Waterford; enlargement of the rail fleet by 300 carriages to give network-wide benefit; further appraisals of projects such as the western rail corridor phases 2 and 3, Cork commuter rail and a high-speed Belfast to Cork, M3 Parkway and Navan line; and investment in park-and-ride facilities, rail station improvements, passenger information and accessibility enhancements. These elements are all part of the plan.

The national planning framework is supportive of all that I have outlined and of further investment. While it is silent on some aspects of the roll-out of rail, we must stress that we in Iarnród Éireann view the strategy as very positive. Railways, more than any other form of public transport, rely on critical mass and higher density population centres to provide the economic case for investment and societal benefits. By developing strong cities as a counterbalance to Dublin, we will ensure that the development of railways in Ireland in the future is beyond Dublin-centric commuting, as critical as that requirement is. As things stand, the existing network is underfunded, and we in Iarnród Éireann must see the funding issue resolved before further network expansion can be considered where increases in the public service obligation, PSO, funding are likely to be required. While previous studies have shown a weak business case for further regional rail lines to be opened, the renewal studies conducted as part of the NDP will definitively establish the position under the current Department of Finance investment guidelines. In the meantime, nothing will occur that will prevent the development of railway lines should a business case support it.

I will now discuss greenways, which have generated considerable debate in many parts of the country. Our position is that where there is no realistic medium-term likelihood of a rail line being reopened, greenways help to protect the rail alignment from encroachment and adverse possession by providing a public amenity on otherwise unused alignments. In every case where we, along with CIE property, issue a licence for the operation of greenways on disused alignments, it is with the explicit provision that the alignment would revert to us should a decision be made to invest in the reinstatement of the railway.

I have outlined our position to the committee in terms of the agenda and welcome any questions on the issue.