Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

I did not suggest that Deputy Neville was irresponsible. I will deal with the point made by Deputy Neville and I support much of what he was trying to say. I ask him to bear with me for one moment as he was the final speaker and there were many before him. I wish to deal with the issues raised. These boil down in many respects to one clear issue. What all the speakers were saying, but in an undefined way, is that the Government should subsidise highly profitable companies to move their goods around the country by rail. This is a legitimate position to adopt and I have no argument with it. However, when it comes to looking after the wealth of this country, the taxpayers of this country expect us to be very clear and focused on the real needs of health and education and the development of infrastructure. I do not believe that the subsidising of highly profitable Irish and foreign companies is at the top of the taxpayers' list.

I too support the movement of freight on the rail system. Deputies opposite ask what the Government has done. We have put €1.5 billion into restoring the entire rail network to allow for the expansion in the movement of passengers and this facility could also be available to rail freight. The difficulty is that given the scale and size of this country, the distances involved are very short. It is therefore very difficult to run large amounts of goods on a rail network over short distances. It is successful in Europe and more successful in the UK because the distances are greater.

This country does not have major centres of population; Dublin is the only one. Even Cork, our second city, by international measure is not a major city of international standards whereas the UK has many cities with populations in excess of 2 million. I am not being disparaging but simply setting out the facts. This also has an impact on rail passenger services but we are making very good progress in this area.

I say to Deputy Eamon Ryan that I am well aware of Norfolkline's contribution to both the Port of Waterford and to the development of the container services and the use of the rail services for freight.

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