Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach and that is praise indeed. I should stop now as it is all downhill from here.

Again, as a person who has sat on school boards for 18 years and I am still on one, and have looked at numbers where we had 200 to 300 people applying for 90 places, Dublin is oversubscribed. My grandfather came from Mayo to Dublin. Eight of his siblings went to America. The reality is that we need a better regional balance. I believe that we are the only country in Europe now that has a population that is lower than it was 200 years ago.

We must have a better regional balance and the railways can play their part in that. I completely agree, however, with Deputy Matthews on the idea of compact growth and planning growth along the lines because if one goes to places like Hungary or a place in central Europe, the reason one can have trains every ten or 15 minutes is because when one goes outside of those train stations, there are a great many apartment blocks of ten to 15 storeys. I am not suggesting that we put ten or 15 storey blocks in Ballybrophy or anywhere else but a railway line needs volume.

Perhaps Mr. Logue may contradict me if he wants to or agree with me if he likes, but it is about volume because the fixed costs are high and the extra revenue and passengers are needed once the railway line is running. It surprises me a little bit to realise that it takes 68 people to run a service that only has two trips a day. It seems like a tremendous amount of effort for such a small return with all of these people having to do these jobs. One would have to have the volumes there for the service.

To echo again the points made by Deputy Matthews, when we moved from trains to cars back in the day, that was seen as progress at the time. Realistically, however, I live close enough to Leinster House - I did not do this today because it was lashing rain and I have to go to a few other places – but by and large, I will cycle rather than drive if I can. The challenge we have is that if I want to get a train to Limerick or Cork, I have to get to Heuston Station, go from there to Limerick, from Limerick city to wherever I am going and I can jump in the car. The motorway network, which is fantastic, has made the competition for rail all the greater as the road system has raised its game and has made rail relatively less attractive. If the roads were worse, rail would be more attractive, and so on. Rail has to up its game now in going from the 30 miles per hour to 50 miles per hour and to faster speeds.

I wish to ask Mr. Logue a question, because he is not looking specifically at one area, and then I will bring in some of the regional groups. On the connection to the airport - we know that the metro is going to be a while away - but bearing in mind Ireland's infrastructure issues, planning processes and so forth, how quickly does Mr. Logue think that a Dublin Airport heavy rail link might be established and at what cost?