Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas don Aire Stáit as ucht teacht isteach.

I received an email recently from the students union in Galway. It said it had received multiple reports from students who get the train into the city from Athenry that it is often full or late and that there have even been cases where students have been refused entry to the train as they did not have a ticket for that specific journey despite having a monthly ticket that permits them on the train. The writer assumed I had likely heard, which I had, and had heard it from many people, that the trains in and out of Galway are packed and the trains from Limerick and Dublin are similarly packed.

There are 17 trains from Athenry to Galway. Some of those originate in Limerick and some originate from the Dublin direction. That is, on the face of it, quite a success because it is not so many years ago that people were saying it had been foolish to open the Limerick to Galway line. It has also been verified to me that the trains from Limerick are full when they get to Athenry and that the section of the line that was meant to carry no passengers was, according to Iarnród Éireann, the most rapidly growing line in terms of patronage in 2022. We will have to see what 2023 has brought but, by all records, this is absolutely true. We have a great success story. Of course, I have often believed that if you build it, they will come. Especially with railways, we have seen time and again that if you build it, they will come. In places where people believed there never would be patronage, there is massive patronage. We can say that is great, and I am delighted as I was involved in the initial investment, but we need to do more.

It is an awful tragedy that people cannot get on trains when they have paid for their tickets. It is a tragedy that when people want to take public transport, they find the service cannot accommodate them. It is important we sweat the assets. We are always talking about the metro. I have been a proponent of the metro for the past 20 years but it is also important we do the simple things and sweat the assets.

Put in simple terms, what can be done? The first thing is more carriages could be put on the trains. Longer trains provide better capacity. The second thing we need are longer platforms so that longer trains can be accommodated because, I understand, particularly on the Limerick line, one of the constraining factors is that the platforms are not long enough for six-carriage trains. Slightly more long term are more passing loops, and the most urgent place - it is in train as they are going for planning permission this year - is to get that passing loop between Athenry and Galway which will allow for a radical increase in the frequency of the trains.

I am anxious to find out today what programme the Government has on all of those fronts: longer trains where there is the capacity, lengthening the platforms to take longer trains, which is a relatively simply job, and then putting in the passing loops we need so that we can get a much greater frequency on these single-line tracks. What we need is a train not every 40 minutes but down to every quarter of an hour in each direction in the long term. In the short term, will the Minister of State tell me what will be done to make sure that if a person turns up for the train, that person can get on the train?

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