Mr. Jim Meade:

It is not currently. I will be honest with the Deputy that it is not on the radar. There are many things to do under the NDP. We have more plans than we have NDP funding. If any more funding becomes available we would put our hands up and say that we could do this or that to add to the service, but currently there is no plan for it.

The Deputy's comments on Oranmore are correct. We looked at that and we have modelled it. We can do a 15-minute service by putting a loop in Oranmore and a second platform. We believe that this has to be done in stages. Nobody is going to give us the funding to build a completely new railway with four or five stations at each end, but I have taken this proposal to the NTA, which is looking at the funding. If the NTA agrees that it is a good proposal it would be the first step in significantly improving the services for Galway.

With regard to the proposed Galway ring road, it will help the Connemara people going around Galway and anybody going out west but Galway city centre would still be congested. A train being able to come right into Eyre Square is the right thing to do. That plan is still with the NTA and we will support it very strongly. We believe that it would also be right to double-track the whole line because that would allow us to keep on the train, but the first step will be to do the piece in the middle at Oranmore, where one can cross trains every 15 minutes. That would then become a self-fulfilling prophecy and we could just keep extending the two lines.