Mr. Jim Meade:

Those are very relevant and important queries. The new trains and the electrification of the line will bring a level of resilience that we do not have. We have a mixed bag of trains at the moment. We have loco trains on the Enterprise service, diesel commuter trains, diesel intercity trains and electric trains. These are all operating on that corridor, with different performance characteristics. The advent of the new Alstom fleet will standardise the trains on the route. They are basically electric trains that are powered from overhead lines or by means of batteries. They are faster and better trains and will be able to let people on and off more quickly. That will contribute.

As already stated, the connections with Pearse, Grand Canal Dock and all the way to Bray are being reinstated as they were. There will still be some requirement for some transfers at Connolly, depending on people’s journeys, where they are coming from and where they are going, as there always has been. That will always be a feature of train travel. We are not able to go from station to station with every train.

The bottlenecks mentioned by the Chair are there, they are infrastructural bottlenecks, but I am happy to say that under the all-island strategic rail review, we have identified those. They are included in the vision document that the Cabinet, the NTA and the Department have signed off on. The Department is working on identifying the projects to prioritise. It expects to publish information in that regard in the next month or so. It will look at which projects will give us the best return in the short term in the context of improving services. Adding infrastructure, whether it is turn-backs, double-tracking, four-tracking or whatever, increases both capacity and resilience. That is what we need to do. The trains will improve that, as will electrification. Ultimately, however, at a certain point we will need more track infrastructure, which is what the Chair was referring to. That is either a new alignment or four-tracking on the existing alignment at least to Malahide and maybe sections beyond that. That whole corridor, as we all know, will grow significantly and it continues to grow with the level of housing and everything. If we are going to get the full resilience into it, that is what we need over time. However, I am happy to say it is part of the all-island strategic rail review. It is in our plans. It is sitting with the Department and the NTA to say where we go first. We cannot do everything across the country together - the supply chain will not be able to cater for that – but the northern corridor is high on the priority list.