Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I think the Deputy has raised this question about the south-eastern line before, and I think he got a response. It is significantly constrained south of Bray as it is a single-track line with limited passing capacity. This reduces the competitiveness of rail against travel by road. In addition, Wexford is currently well served by commercial bus services provided by Wexford Bus and Bus Éireann and as a result, there are no plans to provide an express rail service from Wexford. In other words, the roads have had a large amount of money spent on them already and there are no plans to do what the Deputy has suggested.

The merits of various consultants and their reports can certainly be argued by Deputy Wallace or myself. My guess is that the consultants to whom Deputy Wallace referred, who were asked to produce the rail review, had a mandate which was very much weighted towards the commercial side. What they came up with in the rail review were the figures for losses on the Dublin-Rosslare line, which I have read out. The cost per passenger journey to break even was €30.80 in 2014 while in 2015, it was €29.10. However, we cannot measure its value by this alone. That is what Governments and Government policy are for. We cannot measure every rail line in terms of commerce. These are commercially unviable rail lines which we are running for social reasons.

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