Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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I thank Mr. Doocey for his response. He did say that when the rail review is published, all of the analyses underpinning the decisions will be available. I will be interested in looking at that and seeing what it says. Sometimes when looking at a sparsely populated region, or perhaps more sparsely populated than other parts of the country, an economic analysis often does not give enough credibility or weight to the potential for new infrastructure, whatever it might be. We have to look at the big picture. We are looking here at the upgrading of the N17. We have seen some of the upgrades of that road and the massive difference they have made to road safety, journey times, etc. We also need to look at the Sligo-Dublin rail link and the need for double tracking on parts of that railway corridor because of the times. Earlier Senator Murphy mentioned that he would be travelling home by train, and I did not have time to ask him how long it would take him to get there. It is not just about having a railway in place. It is also about the speed and how efficient it is for the people who use it. There are a lot of different bits and pieces of the jigsaw that we have to balance because we have only so much money we can invest. The Government takes those decisions ultimately and they can only be taken when we have the various pieces of analyses underpinning decisions. Dr. John Bradley has a report on the reinstatement of the western rail corridor. All of these pieces of information need to be put together when decisions are being made.

Right now, we are at the end of stage 2 of the greenway, or we will be by the end of this year, so money has been spent and that potential exists. There are no negatives to building the greenway that anyone has spoken of. The Chair has spoken about how towns benefit and tourism increases. Therefore, in its own right it has many positives apart from local people using it for walking and recreation. It also has quite significant economic benefits. Sometimes in our part of the world we look enviously at the Waterford greenway and others to see the huge potential and benefits they have brought to those regions. Equally, a western rail corridor would bring benefits, but right now we are in a position where we are at least a quarter of the way, and maybe further, with building a greenway. The project has no negatives so we should proceed with that.

Then we must also look at the bigger picture of the different pieces of infrastructure such as the N17, the Sligo-Dublin rail link and the western rail corridor, following which decisions will be taken in the context of the moneys we need to spend in the region.

I am one of those people who is always talking about the fact that we do not get our fair share, so I am not going to suggest it is anything other than that. We need a great deal of front-loading just to make up ground and try to address the imbalance that is there. We can only do that when we have all the information in front of us. We are talking about costs.

My only question to Mr. Doocey at this stage is whether has been an analysis of the cost of greenway versus railway. I understand that it depends on where you are starting from, but we know what condition the western rail corridor is in. Mr. Doocey probably has a good idea of what would be needed to either restore it to make it into a greenway or to literally rebuild it. We talk about a rail line, but it is not a rail line. It is basically scrap metal on a corridor. We know that. In very general terms, do we have any figures relating to the cost of building a greenway or that of building a railway?