Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests. This has been an insightful and engaging conversation and I compliment our guests on their opening remarks. I had to smile when Mr. Feeney used the phrase "We built it and they came" in respect of the Oranmore station, as demonstrated in its strong patronage and increased passenger numbers. In our case in Mayo, the headline in The Western Peopleabout the official opening of the then Connacht Regional Airport in 1986 was "And they said it couldn't be done". In the lead-up to the airport opening, political will for it was practically non-existent. The airport, on that boggy and sometimes foggy site outside Knock, reached nearly 1 million passengers yearly before the pandemic. The initial conservative forecast was for more than 8,000 passengers. We have seen what can be done. As Mr. Devane outlined, the western rail project is a golden opportunity in the wider strategic context of economic development, and that should not be forgotten.

My question is on Iarnród Éireann's recently published Rail Freight 2040 strategy. It is incredible it ignores the rail freight potential of the western rail corridor. It suggests that rail freight from Mayo to the nation's newest tier 1 port in Foynes should travel via the greater Dublin area on a potential 850 km route instead of going directly down the western seaboard via Galway and Clare, offering those counties access to rail freight as well as the connectivity Mayo currently enjoys.

I would like to get an understanding from West on Track as to whether it was aware that Iarnród Éireann was working on this rail freight strategy and what is its views on the current situation. Certainly, Mayo has a strong presence in terms of all intermodal shipping traffic to Irish Rail for the past 16 years and it has been certainly seriously disadvantaged by this strategic review.