Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

However, if one considers the route in a wider strategic context of economic development, it is only when passenger rail services operate on the back of what is really the key strategic benefit - an industrial rail freight capability that brings employment and manufacturing to a region that has clean power, clean water and a highly skilled manufacturing workforce - that this starts to make sense. To my mind, none of the reports to date has examined the question in that broader context. No one has asked the big 20-year or 30-year industrial development question about what we need to do in the north west.

This would not just be good for the people of the west, but for the whole country. It would bring income, tax breaks and balanced regional development. It is not a Dublin versus anyone else situation. Rather, it makes logical industrial development policy sense. It means that the IDA can go abroad and tell people that, if they want high-quality, guaranteed and low-cost energy, high-quality water supplies, a very good workforce and rail connectivity to an international port that allows them to ship their goods to anywhere in the world, then they would have a choice between Foynes or Waterford as part of a spine that extends right the way up the west.

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