Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

That is good to hear. To be honest, I have never heard so many people talking about investing in public transport as I have in the last three years or so many talking about improving rail services and bus services, including rural bus services, such as the Connecting Ireland services that have been incredibly successful in my constituency. I would love to see more of them but I am realistic enough to know that in transport in this country, we have probably under-invested and have not been ambitious enough for the last 40 or 50 years, when we instead concentrated on the car. To expect the transport agencies and transport providers to suddenly spring to life with this massive demand creates problems.

One area where we have under-invested is in regard to the electrification of rail systems. Mr. Strachan spoke about decarbonisation and I know the DART+ project is in various different phases. In terms of the electrification of lines from, say, Dublin to Cork or Dublin to Belfast, is that something the NTA is actively researching and looking at? There is a type of technology called discontinuous overhead electrification, where trains run for 60 km and are charged for 60 km. Mr. Strachan will be aware of it. Is it a runner? Is it something that we could design in such a way that the electrified section is in the midlands, and we could have a commuter line running up and down on it and the main lines running through it. Is that on the NTA agenda?