Mr. Colmán Ó Raghallaigh:

I thank Deputy Dillon for his question. The Deputy's point is well made about the rail freight strategy that was published, if you could call it "published", before Christmas. It was widely expected that the western rail corridor would be included in that. It is my belief that if Iarnród Éireann had its way it would have been included in that, but for some reason it was not. It was taken off the map. The question we have to ask is, why are these kinds of decisions being made? I am afraid I am not in a position to answer.

What I can say with certainty is that this week there will be 18 freight trains from County Mayo - nine into the county and nine out of the country. Eight will be coming from Ballina and one will be coming from Westport. Four of the outward bound services will be going to Waterford and five will be going to Dublin. That will increase in the next few months when XPO launches its second freight service to Waterford from Mayo. That is why it is difficult to see why the potential for that was omitted, as the Deputy says, from the rail freight strategy. I cannot tell the Deputy why. Maybe Iarnród Éireann can tell him why.

The reality is this freight exists because in the early 2000s it was decided that Ballina freight port would be closed and West on Track was instrumental in ensuring that it did not close. Working with Iarnród Éireann and Mayo industries, the situation was brought about where the freight that the Deputy sees today was put in place and different operators have operated over the years. What is significant about this is that IWT and XPO are two Dublin-based international companies shipping to Europe and they are shipping from Ballina. IWT has appeared before this committee and stated that it requires the western rail corridor, in its view, to expand its operation and to expand out into neighbouring counties such as Galway and Clare. The Irish Exporters Association has made it clear that it supports the reopening of this corridor as a freight route in the context of the reopening of Foynes, as the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has said on several occasions.

The Port of Waterford and Foynes port both wrote to Dr. John Bradley, when he was doing his report, strongly supporting the link between Ballina and those ports using the western rail corridor. It might be said that 18 trains a week, or 20, as it will be, hopefully, later in spring, is a relatively small number of trains but if you had another 20 from Galway and another 20 from Clare, that would be 60 trains a week. The 18 trains out of Mayo this week are taking 324 articulated lorries off the road and I would submit that is the vision the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, puts forward as far as climate change and all of that is concerned. That illustrates how green the movement of freight by rail is. As Deputy Dillon says, it is ridiculous to think that when Foynes port is opened, if the situation with the map on the freight strategy continues, all of that freight will be moved from Ballina to the greater Dublin area and then down to Limerick and out to Foynes. That does not make any sense.