Mr. Jim Meade:

I will respond to the Deputy in the order in which he put his questions. We all know the history of the Ballybrophy line. It did not get much investment during the lean years - for the past 20 years. The line needs significant upgrading to bring it up to the standard of any of our main lines such as the Galway, Waterford or Westport-Galway lines. Several level crossings need to be upgraded and several signalling issues need to be dealt with. While it is safe to operate trains on the track infrastructure, speeds on it cannot be increased until there is significant investment in the line. I would be slow to put numbers on the cost of upgrading it today but it would involve serious numbers, tens of millions of euro, to do the 53 miles of track on the line. I do not have a costing with me but I would be happy to get a detailed costing for the Deputy and pass it on to him in due course. That is the first step that would be required if we wanted to put high frequency on the line.

On the Rosslare issue and a line to the south east, as my colleague said earlier, we do not see a major opportunity for freight out of Rosslare because it is a roll-on, roll-off port. As part of the study we are doing, we see the opportunity for having the Port of Cork at Marino Point, the Port of Waterford, as previously mentioned, and, in the long term, Shannon Foynes, as a tier one port, connected to rail with freight traffic moving to them. This will become part of the overall study the Department is doing, taking account of what is the best value for money in investing in these various facilities. The biggest one to invest in would be Shannon Foynes because it is relatively easy to reconnect at Marino Point, as we passed by it today, and it was formerly rail connected. As we said, the Port of Waterford is currently rail connected.

It is about generating capacity to feed into those ports and attracting customers back to the network. The biggest challenge for us will be generating more traffic through working with partners such as IWT and developing new partnerships across the board with a view to migrating to rail freight. That will include the way in which the Government may want to incentivise companies to move to rail, as opposed to road.