Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy reminded me, and it is appropriate, that the committee should mark the terrible loss of life on our roads in recent days. There were two deaths in County Mayo yesterday and there have been other fatalities. It is something that is our primary concern. Everything we need to do involves thinking about how to reduce that pattern. I am not aware that any of those recent accidents have anything to do with the insurance issue the Deputy raised, but I wanted to mark that.

The legislation we introduced last year in the Dáil - the road traffic Act - has measures that improve and enhance the Garda's ability to assess whether cars are properly insured. I am glad the Deputy got a warm response to his parliamentary question. We need to now use that capability to make sure all cars are properly insured at all times.

With regard to the Shannon rail spur, I will again reference a colleague of mine. Deputy Leddin and others have said the same thing as Deputy Crowe. There is a real issue. Massive investment is coming into Dublin, including metro north, DART+, BusConnects and the Luas to Finglas. The list goes on and on. Dublin needs all that. It is not that we should stop the development of Dublin.

As is stated in our national planning framework, we need balanced regional development and that means at we also have to invest in Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick. I do not purposely mention Limerick last in this regard. The critical mechanism that will help us in this regard is the strategic rail review. I expect it to be agreed by Government very shortly and with our colleagues up North this month. We will then move to the implementation phase. In that context, the review specifically refers to the potential for the development of the Limerick metropolitan rail system, including a rail spur to Shannon. Again, the Deputy is correct that not only would it be of benefit for Shannon Airport but also for Limerick itself and other towns between it and Shannon. Such a spur would provide wider connectivity. To my mind, this is a really attractive way to counterbalance the imbalanced development in our country.

As I understand it, there are a variety of route options. This has been looked at before. There are complications. Land is readily available to facilitate the building of the line into the town and to the airport. Building a new rail line is expensive, but it is not anything like building a new metro system, for example. We have asked the European Investment Bank to carry out an assessment of some of the implementation plans relating to the strategic rail review. We are talking about a project that will take two to three decades to complete. We are effectively committing - and any future Government will have to do the same - €1 billion each year to the project. We are investing in the same way that we invested in the motorway programme, namely in a systemic and long-term way. That approach brought the cost down and improved delivery because the contractors and everyone else knew there would be work available for two decades. Similarly, the next three decades have to be dominated by investment in public transport. It is really important there is a regional balance to that. With regard to Limerick, it is not just about the rail spur to Shannon, it is also about how we use the Ennis and Nenagh lines, the Shannon-Foynes line, which we are reopening, and the line to Limerick Junction. We must also consider how we put in new stations in Shannon, Ballysimon and Moyross. I do not want to involved in politics of it, but, as I understand it, the new Mayor of Limerick is very committed to that. My sense is that the people of Limerick voted for that in the recent election. It was not a small issue in that election. There is public support for this. From my side, at a political level in government, there is also support for it because it is in Dublin's interest that Limerick rises and expands faster. That line would help tremendously in this regard.