Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

They can shake hands at the Cork-Limerick border with that rail line. It is fantastic to hear every Deputy come in here and talk about Navan lines, Cork extensions, Galway extensions, late-night services, more trains, better services and cheaper fares. We must remember the context of decades of underinvestment in public transport, which turned in 2020 with the programme for Government commitment of a 2:1 expenditure on public transport over new roads. One of the most important things for rail projects is certainty of investment and budgets, as well as confidence. They are long projects which last decades or a century. An investment in rail is an asset that will serve us for decades but we need certainty to deliver, design, build and maintain those projects. For future governments, that 2:1 spend must be maintained. That has to be a priority. Companies like Irish Rail need that certainty in budgets and support from government policy for those projects. Stop-start policy changes destroy those long-term ambitions.

I have three questions. One is on freight and another is on staff capacity. Our colleagues from bus services were in recently and talked about driver training and retention. At the other end, when a piece of machinery is in operation for 18 or 20 hours per day, a good maintenance programme is needed for reliability. I also want to talk about heritage on the railway, which is an aspect we do not often talk about.

On the freight study, freight has been in decline for 40 years. It was a big part of how we got goods around the country. What is Irish Rail's vision for freight? What can we bring to the delivery of freight in this country?