Dr. Tadhg O'Mahony:

First, it is usually argued that the Irish rail system is underutilised. A decade or two ago, around 4% or 5% of freight was rail freight so there are opportunities to look at that. Reopening existing lines is an option and the all-Ireland strategic rail review provides an enormous opportunity to examine this further. Instead of taking the possible expansion of rail off the table, we should look at it. Just because we look at an option does not mean that we go down the road of taking it. What I am advocating in terms of transformative approaches does not mean that we go to the extremes of this. It means that we look at those extremes and see what the implications are in terms of the capital investment costs, the positives that come from them in terms of the public good vis-à-visreductions in road traffic accidents, air pollution and all of the other impacts of an unsustainable system. Looking out to 2050, we need to be considering the implications of moving the bulk of freight over to rail. What would that mean? How much expansion would it mean? How many new rail heads or hubs would it mean? What would it mean in terms of technological approaches to logistics and bundling goods together from different companies, whether they are intermediate products for industry or final products for consumers? We need to look at all of this. We do not necessarily switch everything over but at the moment we are working in a vacuum, on both the passenger and freight sides, because we do not have the evidence to allow us to look at transformative approaches.