Nessa Cosgrove (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis na finnéithe as teacht isteach inniu.

I have raised this with the witnesses at different stages. The NTA is responsible for a number of railway functions in association with Irish Rail. The issues I will deal with are the Sligo-Dublin railway line and the opening of the western railway corridor. The first thing I would like to talk about is the possible introduction of an early morning commuter train from Longford to arrive in Sligo before 9 a.m. I recently spoke to a young postgraduate student who completed a research study in ATU around rail traffic in Sligo. Her findings were surprising and a simulation of her work can be viewed on a website that I would be happy to share. It is interesting. Her evidence shows that there is a train available in Longford at that time of day and that staff are also there. The train would arrive at 8.19 a.m. at little or no extra cost. Her feasibility study has proved this. At the moment, the first train arrives in Sligo at 10.16 a.m. and this is having a significant negative impact on students, workers and people who want to attend morning appointments. We have a student housing crisis in Sligo and this would alleviate a lot of that. Is there any way this could be taken on board as it seems to be an easy win?

The second issue I will speak about, which I have also written to the NTA about, is the return of the catering carriage on the Dublin-Sligo train. It was withdrawn along with other catering services during the pandemic, but other routes have had it restored. The catering carriage has been restored on the Cork-Dublin route and on the Belfast-Dublin route. There is a huge demand for it. I did a vox-pop on the early morning train and in two weeks we got more than 770 signatures from people who want it to be reinstated. The NTA knows there is demand for it because in July 2024 we received reassurances from Barry Kenny of Irish Rail that services would be reinstated by the start of 2025. I wrote to Mr. Creegan and I received a reply from him stating:

At the present time, there are no plans to reintroduce catering services on the Sligo-Dublin rail route. There are significant costs attached to the provision of such catering services. The income is much less than the cost and funding for such provision has not been provided. Accordingly, Irish Rail is not in a position to offer such services.

I then inquired about the cost of the service before it was withdrawn and the estimated cost of reinstating the catering services. The response from the NTA said that Irish Rail was in a better position to answer my question. My freedom of information request was transferred to Irish Rail on 17 April and I have yet to receive a response. However, I did hear back from Irish Rail on a question I asked subsequently regarding the cost of operating the Cork-Dublin catering service, which resumed in May 2023. The response was far from reassuring. It was that Iarnród Éireann has contracted a third-party supplier to provide catering services on the Cork-Dublin line following a competitive tender process and that any profits or losses are incurred by it directly. If Irish Rail is unaware of what the profit or loss associated with an existing service is, how can the NTA know the expenditure required for the reintroduction of the catering carriage on the Sligo-Dublin line will be greater than the income generated?

Is it the responsibility of the NTA to look for this extra funding from the Department? It does not seem fair to me that a private provider can cherry-pick what it thinks are the most profitable train lines when surely, if they are more profitable, there can be a substitute method whereby there would be some kind of subsidisation between the more profitable routes and the less profitable routes.