Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Public Accounts Committee

2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 31 - Transport, Tourism and Sport

9:00 am

Mr. Graham Doyle:

We have a very extensive rail network in the country given the spread of population. Rail works best when one is dealing with travel from one high population centre to another and spreading the fixed costs, which are very heavy. Deputy Farrell does not need me to tell him that. I do not have an answer for the cost of doing it but I suspect it is in the billions. Realistically, what we would have to do in terms of expenditure of the efforts and financial resources that we make out under capital plans is that we have to look at what the priorities are. It is clear to us that the key priorities are the projects I have mentioned, one of which is certainly in under the existing capital plan and we will be pushing for others.