Mr. John Mulligan:

All of the witnesses are in broad agreement about a number of issues, one of which is that, depending on the timetable and its scale, the railway corridor being reopened would be an asset to the west. However, what is there at the moment is not a railway. It is a strip of land that runs from Athenry to Kilclooney. That is a State asset which belongs to all of us. Mr. Devane rightly stated that one of the uses for that strip of land should be transmitting power. We have been saying this for ten years. We have also been saying that it should be used to transmit broadband because in the future, our exports will be sent not on trains but on fibre cable. If we want to improve towns in the so-called black triangle, we need salaries, not necessarily freight trains rolling through them. We need people working remotely and spending their money in those towns.

I do not know how I can get this point across. Senator Kyne returned to it when he said that once a greenway is built on a rail alignment, that is the end of the railway. That is the Boxcar Willie point - if the track is lifted, it is all over. That is nonsense, however. I have seen the licence agreement Irish Rail has with Waterford County Council regarding the Waterford greenway and it is watertight. The main piece of that repayment is that the primary use of this asset is for future rail use. I do not know how many ways that must be translated for that message to get across.

Deputy Cannon asked what if the rail review finds whatever it finds. CIÉ does not decide to build railways, I do not decide to build railways and Colmán Ó Raghallaigh does not decide to build railways. The people who decide that are in this House and they have decided thus far not to build a railway on that route. If they are not going to build a railway in the next five to ten years, they should put a temporary greenway on that alignment, preserve and protect it and milk it as an asset. When and if there is reason to build a railway, build it and build a greenway alongside it. That is a very simple concept. A child could understand it, yet we have difficulty in getting that across to Members in this House - with honourable exceptions. I do not know how many ways we must say that but this is an asset that belongs to us all. Leverage it. Do not leave it there for another 40 years. Do not keep saying like we do with draining the Shannon, "Come back to me next time and we will do it". We just want a decision to be made. That is all we want.