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

The Deputy is right. When the Limerick-Ennis service reopened, it defied expectations and there was huge demand but that has always been the case. When the Cobh line to Cork was reopened, passenger demand was way ahead of expectations. There are significant passenger numbers on the line from Ennis to Athenry. Every time, we open passenger rail services, the public shows with its feet that it wants it.

None of the investment that will be required to reopen the western rail corridor is in the existing NDP. We do not have any budget for the new rail freight carriages in which we will need to invest.

The ones I think we will invest in come from France and are being used in the ports we connect to such as Cherbourg, where a rail freight carriage can pivot and take a haulage truck, a trailer, straight onto the train; it clips back in. That changes the entire dynamics of how rail freight can work. Battery electric trucks will also change it. To date the economics of rail freight did not work especially in small countries like Ireland because distance matters. However, distance now matters in a different way when decarbonising haulage solutions because the battery electric trucks only have a range of about 300 km. It does not make economic sense to drive from Westport to Dublin Port or to Rosslare Europort because it would be necessary to recharge which will take four or five hours. However, it does make sense do a shuttle run. The Allergan plant is only across the road from the railway station but it would be possible to haul shorter distances in a clean way. The Deputy is absolutely right; all those companies have scope 3 requirements and need to decarbonise their transport systems. Once this report is published, I would like to ask all those businesses if they are on for it. Do they think this is the way we can collectively decarbonise? I bet that the vast majority would say "Yes".

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