Ms Mary Considine:

I thank Deputy Crowe for his good wishes. He is absolutely right that the all-island strategic rail review does provide for a rail link to Shannon Airport. At the moment, it is envisaged that it would be a spur off the Limerick to Ennis line. What needs to happen now is a feasibility study to look at the preferred routing of that line. As the Deputy will be aware, there are also plans to upgrade the entrance road to the airport, so it is about making sure that, in planning those works, we are keeping the land available for a future rail link. To progress that rail link, the feasibility study on the land needs to be done in the near term. That is still subject to funding; there still is not funding allocated to that. We will be working with the National Transport Authority and the Department to secure funding to get that initial piece of work done. Subject to that, we would be able to get into detailed design and put a more likely timeframe on it. It is within the first ten-year period of the strategy. We would like to accelerate that because it is an easy enough solution to put in place and something we would like to see happen. As a country, our airports and ports should be connected by rail and that is one of our priorities. It is certainly central to the strategic rail review.