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

Please God, the Assembly will return, but in the absence of that, we do not have full control over what we can do with the report. I have to bow to the diplomatic reality that we are in.

I am glad Deputy Dillon mentioned the reopening of the Foynes line because it is connected to the western rail corridor. We need to think in the long term. The development of Rosslare Port in Wexford is necessary for the development of offshore wind, which means the quayside will have to be developed. We should put the rail line back and reopen the line between Wexford and Waterford. Waterford Port has rail lines right along the quay. Cork Harbour will be a huge area for potential industrial development because of the development of offshore wind. There is rail connectivity right down to the quayside in Marino, which is closed but could be reopened at a relatively low cost. The same could happen in Foynes. There could be major development of the port and rail line right down to the quay.

Strategic development along the corridor I mentioned could involve each of the large deep-water international ports we have, which have existing rail freight capability but hardly any services. The only real services are from Ballina south down to Waterford for forest products, Coca-Cola and some other products. If we could complete this network by reopening the connections to the quaysides and create a spine from the north west to the south east, that would be a strategic investment on the part of the State that makes sense to me. The review did not emphasise rail freight; that was not its key objective.

We are going to have to do a lot more work to look at how rail freight connected to our ports system would work but it definitely could work.

In response to Deputy Doherty as to whether it is through Navan, Portadown, Omagh, Dungannon or Strabane, my personal view is that the Dungannon, Omagh, Strabane route and on to Letterkenny has real potential in terms of what it would do to what are not insignificant towns. As the Deputy said, they have suffered from that lack of connectivity west of the Bann as much as Letterkenny has. My instinct, following the discussions I had with ARUP, is that it would be very expensive because it would be a new line but it would be transformative for the north west.

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