Mr. John Mulligan:

Mr. Logue has made very good points about the amount of work that needs to be done on the rail network and the sheer volume of improvements required. The Sligo to Dublin line has an average running speed of 40 mph. That is Third World stuff. The economic corridor for the north west at the moment is that Sligo to Dublin link. We need a railway on that route. We need that to be done. While recognising the value in what the representatives of West on Track have said about linking Sligo with Galway, the reality is there is a huge stack-up of work to be done before that happens. All we are saying is that in the interim, that route should be preserved with the greenway.

Green transport is also transport. Short commuting with electric bikes, or whatever, is popular and growing. If one can put the greenway into all of those towns, one can facilitate commuting off the road.

My final point is that the section of that line north of Claremorris, between Claremorris and Sligo, where again somebody referred to the number of crossings on the line, has 400 such crossings on it, . It was known as the Burma Road because of the slow rate of trains on it. I humbly suggest to West on Track that, with the improvement of the N17, they would also look to incorporating a direct rail alignment in that to cut out all of those crossings. If one looks at somewhere like Athens to Corinth rail route, where it was a similar type of slow and twisting railway, they built a motorway and railway beside it and just abandoned the railway. It has created a proper commuting service compared to what was there. I do not want to be seen to knock the notion of the western rail corridor. It will be grand when we get it, if we get it, but in the meantime all I am saying is to ask all of the Deputies here to please make a decision and not to leave this as a can to be kicked down the road for another 40 years because we are just sick of all of that dereliction.