Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At the European Council meeting the Tánaiste discussed economic resilience. That requires investing in infrastructure. Why has the Government not included the western rail corridor project in the EU TEN-T? Only projects included in the TEN-T list of projects have access to the Connecting Europe Facility, known as the CEF fund. It is up to each country to lay out its priorities for rail, road, ports and so forth and submit them to the EU. There are two lists on this issue, the core list of projects to be completed by 2030 and then the broader list to be completed by 2050. In December 2021, the European Commission published its proposals for a revised TEN-T regulation. In this proposal the map of the TEN-T network in Ireland remains largely unchanged and the core network does not include the west. This means that transport projects in the west will have limited access to EU funding, particularly in the short term. Sinn Féin recently received confirmation that the Department will not even consider including the western rail corridor on the TEN-T network map until the all-island strategic rail review is completed. To the people of Mayo and throughout the west, this looks like a tactic to delay and frustrate, especially when projects in the greater Dublin area do not seem to need to wait for this review. Will the Minister ensure the western rail corridor is added to a core project list and is eligible for core funding? We cannot have the European Research Group, ERG, and the DUP holding up a project such as the western rail corridor. We cannot have the Government hiding behind that as an excuse not to invest in rural Ireland and not to deliver the vital infrastructure that is the western rail corridor.

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