Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I know the Minister of State is aware that there are approximately 1,000 railway crossings that are manually operated across the State. This is a problem. While there has been progress, I am concerned when I hear the Minister of State say this matter is the responsibility of Iarnród Éireann. It is the responsibility of the Department and the Minister of State should tell Iarnród Éireann that the situation with regard to manually operated crossings is unacceptable. Let me give some examples. I am aware a bridge is to be built over the railway crossing at Reilly's Bridge in Cabra in the near future, but in the meantime we have traffic jams one mile long, at a cost to the State in terms of people and workers being delayed. There is also an issue of health and safety. I cannot pinpoint a major incident in recebt years, but we need to ensure such an incident never happens. There is an automatic crossing in Athenry which runs to a schedule, but a problem arose there recently. If an automatic crossing is scheduled and the train service is delayed or something else happens, this could lead to a serious problem. I have mentioned Reilly's Bridge, but just up the road at Ashtown there is another manually operated crossing. Approximately 2,000 apartments were built in the area, but we allowed a manually operated crossing at the site. The failure to provide for a flyover or other means of crossing the line represented bad planning on the part of the local authorities.

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