Mr. Jim Meade:

We carried out an overarching freight strategy a year and a half ago, which called out €500 million over a ten- or 15-year period or maybe longer. It looked at inland ports and intermodal hubs. Those would be new facilities where we would connect in. There are some yards we could use. We are talking to some of the local authorities. One local authority in the middle of the country is very interested in an intermodal hub because it would have connectivity to ports. We would put in the facilities where they would be best suited to allow the heavy goods industry to do the short hauls to and from the ports. Traditionally, such as in the case of my home station in Limerick, the freight yard was located in what is now almost the middle of the city, but we would not put it there now. It would be somewhere outside the city and we would let the road transport do the short legs.

For us, it is about reconnecting with the ports. A good example is Foynes Port, which we are reconnecting with. I know the Shannon Foynes Port Company is anxious to get it finished and believes it will get a lot of traffic for it if we can start moving traffic to that port. A supplier in the west is anxious to move two trains a week, as soon as we get it open, from the west to Foynes Port. It has specified Foynes Port, but it could really go to any port. We intend to reconnect with Cork Port and we are currently connecting with Waterford Port and Dublin Port. It is about growing business. We currently carry in or around 1% of the traffic, and the ambition is to grow that into the mid-teens over a ten- or 15-year period.