Mr. Brendan Quinn:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for this opportunity to present our views to the Oireachtas. When I started this petition, I had no idea how it would be received. The astonishing number of more than 27,000 people who have signed this petition are in the main from the west of Ireland or are west of Ireland diaspora. These are real people who have expressed a real opinion. Sligo, Mayo and Galway are the three counties through which the closed railway from Collooney, County Sligo to Athenry, County Galway, runs.

There are three stories to tell. As this effort is the combination of three separate campaigns, the Sligo Greenway Co-op, the East Mayo Greenway campaign and Galway’s Quiet Man Greenway campaign, three people sitting alongside me will each give an overview on how they see the greenway benefiting these three counties. These include Councillor Marie Casserly from Sligo County council, Bernice Brennan from Kiltimagh, County Mayo, and former Galway councillor, Shaun Cunniffe, from Tuam. John Mulligan, who has supported this campaign consistently, is also here to give an overview to the committee on the arguments about whether there should be a railway, a greenway, or both.

We recognise that there is another part of this debate. There is a view from some people that the closed railway may actually be re-opened sometime in the future. We hold a pragmatic view. What the State holds in this closed railway route is a continuous piece of land in public ownership. The Department of Transport has called it a “transport corridor”. Placing a greenway on a closed railway route is an international best-practice option to protect a route until such time as a railway is possible. If a railway should ever be re-opened on any part of this route in the future, incorporating a greenway alongside would be a perfectly feasible option.

There is little doubt of the economic benefit this idea would bring to the west of Ireland. I call the economic boom from greenways going through rural areas “greenwaynomics”. It is an amazing phenomenon we all know about, where rural areas discover new economic prosperity simply because of a greenway going through their village, town or townland.

We are here today to ask for our voices to be heard, in particular the voices from County Mayo and County Galway. Let me explain why this is. In 2012, John Mulligan and I met Deputy Alan Kelly, who was Minister of State at the Department of Transport, at a time when none other than Leo Varadkar was Minister for Transport. The then Minister of State, Deputy Kelly, told us, "You pushing at an open door, lads". He agreed with our idea. However, he also told us we needed to get the county councils on board. That was the start of our journey. We needed to get the county councils to adopt the idea and that meant we had to influence changes in the respective county plans. We are still on that journey. We were successful in Sligo, where we finally got the Sligo greenway idea on the closed railway written into the county plan. Councillor Casserly will tell us more about that. In Mayo, we needed to influence the council to adopt the idea of a greenway on the closed railway, in particular, north of Charlestown to Claremorris, and this is a real sticking point.

Over the past decade, we have met with inexplicable opposition to our idea from Mayo County Council. In 2013, Mayo County Council received approximately 400 submissions on the county plan asking for a greenway on this route but did not adopt the idea and did not even mention it in the county plan. Mayo County Council has been aware of the level of public support for a greenway on the route since 2013.

Eight years later, if we fast forward to 2021, a new county plan was due to cover the period from 2022 to 2028. This time, along with this petition, Mayo County Council received 1,000 submissions on the county plan asking for a greenway on the railway route, which accounted for more than 80% of all submissions received on the county plan. However, of huge significance were submissions from the landowners, Irish Rail, and the Department of Transport, which both supported the idea of a greenway running from Charlestown on the Sligo-Mayo border, south to Claremorris. We feel it is very important the committee understands that north of Claremorris there is virtually zero chance of a railway ever being reopened. Because of this known fact, there is simply no rational reason from Mayo County Council to oppose the use of the closed railway as a greenway on this part of the route.

I have mentioned that Irish Rail and the Department of Transport made submissions to Mayo County Council. It is the only time in this presentation that I will refer to a slide. Irish Rail expressed:

...support for the development of greenways in locations where the railway does not have a short to medium term viable business case for reintroduction of services. In terms of the Western Rail Corridor, this conditional support is subject to the section north of Claremorris.

That was said by the landowner, Irish Rail. The Department of Transport said that it "welcome[s] the protection of the Western Rail Corridor as a 'Transport Corridor rather than solely as a railway line'" and that "consideration could be given at a future time for the construction of a greenway on or beside the alignment of the railway line. This would be particularly welcomed ... from Claremorris to Charlestown."

The response from Mayo County Council to 1,000 submissions from the general public and the two very clear submissions from the landowner and the Department of Transport that would fund such a greenway project was little short of astonishing. The county councillors, against the advice of the county manager, and in opposition to the views of 1,000 public submissions, as well as against the specific recommendations of both the landowner, Irish Rail, and the Department of Transport, took it upon themselves to specifically oppose these ideas and inserted an objective into the Mayo county plan, which stated re the MTO9 MCC county plan:

That the Western Rail Corridor (WRC) is protected and preserved for the delivery of Rail Infrastructure to develop the region and the corridor is completely removed from any feasibility study in relation to any proposed greenway.

This objective in the county plan went out of its way to block the views of the 27,000 people who signed this petition, the 1,000 submissions on the county plan, and the views of both Irish Rail and the Department of Transport. That is the main reason we are here today.

At every twist and turn of this debate, Mayo County Council has gone out of its way to suppress even the consideration of what we are proposing, and in total opposition to the views of the Department of Transport and the landowner, Irish Rail. Mayo County Council has built into the county plan a written objective that blocks even a feasibility study. What it has done is almost dictatorial. That is a huge part of the reason we are here today - the sheer intransigence of Mayo County Council on this matter.

On the Galway section of the line, the council response has been an uphill struggle for this campaign. We have support for our ideas on Galway County Council, and we also have opposition, which is fair enough, but at least Galway County Council did not stifle democratic debate. The railway route has been part of a feasibility study, which was published recently, so there is some movement in that area. There is also the all-island strategic rail review, which will be referred to later by my fellow petitioners here today. I am now going to hand over to Councillor Marie Casserly to explain what is happening in Sligo.