Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for the opportunity to discuss the need to expedite the double tracking of the Irish Rail line connecting Athenry, Oranmore, Ardaun and, ultimately, Galway city. I thank the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, for being here today to discuss this matter.

Athenry has a population of just over 5,000 people and the town has doubled in size over the past 20 years. Oranmore also has a population of about 5,000 people and the population has doubled over the past 20 years. The development of a new town, Ardaun, on the periphery of Galway city connecting Galway to Oranmore, will see a projected population of 18,000 people. In the next decade we can expect the cumulative total population of those three towns reaching close to 40,000 people.

The most recent CSO data tell us that there are 1,850 people commuting to Galway city every morning and evening from Athenry and Oranmore and the vast majority of those commutes are made in cars. If we are deadly serious, as we should be, about effecting a modal shift and encouraging people to leave their cars at home and take public transport, we need to be serious about providing people with a genuine alternative to their cars. We need to be serious about vastly increasing the frequency of the commuter rail service between Athenry, Oranmore, Ardaun and the city of Galway. In doing so, I am convinced we can and should encourage people to make that modal shift.

We need to give people genuine alternatives to getting into their cars each morning in all of those towns and finding themselves, along with thousands of others, sitting for a very long time on the eastern edge of Galway city as they make their way into the city. While we are all working hard as best we can to see the development of the outer bypass of Galway city, that will not solve the problem of the accumulation of cars every morning on the eastern side of the city going to one single location, namely, the Parkmore Industrial Estate where the vast majority of people commuting into the city from that eastern side are working.

We need commuter trains departing in both directions every 15 minutes. Irish Rail is ambitious to see this development happening. I understand the National Transport Authority, NTA, is equally ambitious around this development. Mr. Jim Meade outlined in a presentation to the Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport in 2018 that it was an ambition of Irish Rail to develop a better service between Athenry and Galway and that double tracking the line would facilitate the development of a better service.

In addition, this will require significant investment on the part of Irish Rail. It is an investment that needs to be made and makes absolute sense in terms of its sustainability, of vastly improving the quality of life of people residing in those times and of good value for taxpayer. We also need to ensure that any further investment we make in Irish Rail infrastructure in the west of Ireland is made in the best possible interests of rail users and the taxpayer.

I also am anxious to learn when the Minister intends to publish the review of the viability of reinstating a rail service connecting Claremorris to Tuam and onwards to Athenry that was carried out over a year ago. That review has been with the Department long before the Minister arrived there. It is critical to have that review in order that we can plan sustainably and efficiently how we can develop build infrastructure in the west of Ireland in the future. I would argue that these two issues are inextricably linked.

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