Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am shocked. I have said the same thing three or four times now in this committee and it is not particularly new. Yes, I have a role as the Minister responsible and included in that is my role around funding. Limerick needs more investment in public transport, and that is my clear view. We need to invest in the Ballybrophy line, which is being retracked at present and we are going to put extra funding into that. The strategic rail review will, in regard to that line and the Waterford to Limerick line, ask the question as to what those lines are for. Do we let them just chug along at bare minimum use or do we want to make strategic use of them? I think we should make strategic use of them. I think we should build new stations along that line. It is not just that we have the stations in Nenagh and Castleconnell, but we need additional stations and we need to build around that and have the industrial estates served by that.

The Deputy knows that the Limerick to Ennis line lay unused for years. It was then proposed 25 years ago that some money would be spent on it and everyone said it would never be used, but it has been hugely successful, to my mind. I would like to see us putting in the stations, doubling down and going further. Similarly, the existing rail line to Foynes has not been used but we will open it up for freight and for commuters. I see no reason we should not do a spur to Mungret as well and put stations in at Dooradoyle, Crescent and Adare, and start creating that metropolitan rail network for Limerick. Why is it that we have to change at Limerick Junction when going to Limerick? Every time, people have to get out of the bloody train and get on a different one. Why is it a single track from Limerick Junction to Colbert Station when we could twin-track that relatively easily and cheaply, for a fraction of what the road would cost, then put a station in at Ballysimon and watch that area bloom.

Yes, I think that is what we should be doing in Limerick. I am unequivocal in my view that Limerick has been starved of good public transport options. We put a lot of money into road and we built the bridge under the Shannon. Another road and another bridge would undermine that first investment so let us build the public transport. More than anything else, in the three-year timeframe in which we could do it, let us build BusConnects and the active travel that we are going to do in Dublin and Limerick as well. I said to the city manager at the time we approved that road, which the people of Moyross really needed and wanted, that it was fine but on one condition. The condition was that we open up and take down the walls in Moyross that separate it from the rest of the city and its communities, and build the active travel and BusConnects connection between UL, LIT and Mary Immaculate College. I think that will transform the city in three years.