Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests and join with colleagues in congratulating Irish Rail on all the work it is doing developing the pipeline of projects that have been explained in quite a lot of detail in the opening statement and the question and answer session we have had already.

The representatives from Irish Rail will probably agree with what I am about to say, but the matter to which it relates is not one on which the company can make a decision. When we talk about investment in infrastructure, we are talking about strategic planning for the future. We have a history in this country of deciding on infrastructure and accelerating plans in a very reactive way. We look at where the traffic is and where the population growth is happening and then we build infrastructure accordingly. We need to flip that. We need to decide the kind of country we want, where we want people living and what is best for the country as a whole. This discussion is very relevant to that. No other member has made that point. Infrastructure planning has to be strategic. It is important for me to say this and I am saying it to colleagues on the committee, to the civil servants in the Departments of housing, public expenditure and reform, transport and in the NTA.

There are critical infrastructure decisions to be made, particularly in transport, that will change how this country develops over the decades ahead. Rail has the power to fundamentally and positively change this country. I am very much speaking with respect to balanced regional development. At the risk of sounding parochial - and we can all be accused of that - the plan for Limerick, the mid-west and Clare, which is very much as important as Limerick in this conversation, presents an opportunity to invest in rail infrastructure in order that we see a shortening or a closing of the gap between the regions and the capital. That is the power we, as politicians, and the Government have. Rail is fundamental to that because it enables people to move around in an efficient manner. It is the way to go. It is the way we can facilitate the fastest and most effective growth among the regions.

Putting all local and parochial bias aside, given the current infrastructure, the potential for future infrastructure, the people we have, our natural resources and our geographical location, I would argue that the mid-west is strategically located and that the counterbalance to the east should be the mid-west. Rail infrastructure should be the key to making the mid-west the counterbalance.

It is in this context that the rail link to Shannon Airport is critically important. I do not want to hear talk about feasibility studies. We need to be talking about what kind of country we want to live in, where we want people to live, and what is best for the country as a whole. This includes what is best for Dublin as well. That is the power of investing in projects like the rail link to Shannon Airport and in the suburban network that is detailed in the Limerick-Shannon metropolitan area transport strategy. This is what we need to be talking about.

Going by the draft strategic rail review, the rail link to Shannon Airport is in there at €100 million to €200 million in 2021 prices. I acknowledge that those will perhaps have gone up. That is really not a lot of money for the kind of growth that it could deliver for the mid-west region and for its power to close the gap between the mid-west and the capital. The corridor largely is preserved. It could be done very quickly. It is for the Government, not Irish Rail, to make the decision. I know that Irish Rail would do it in the morning if the Government cleared the way. The Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, the NTA and the Department of Transport have key roles to play.

Critically, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and his Department also have a key role to play. We have a housing challenge and our population is due to increase by 1 million by 2040. In the context of our national planning framework target, we must decide, from a strategic point of view, where those people are going to live. Do we do the reactive thing and build infrastructure because those people are naturally going to move to Dublin where the jobs are, or do we create the infrastructure to create the environment for job creation in our regions as well? This is what our Government should be doing. All politicians across the Oireachtas should recognise that this is not a parochial point. This is about developing our country in the right way for the decades to come.

I have very little time remaining and I want to list off a few really important points. I congratulate-----