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

I am not aware of the difficulties of the turnback in Malahide but I will try to find out about them and speak to the Deputy after the debate. There are a lot of different moving parts. The trains are coming. We need to determine the things we need to get right to accelerate the roll-out of the project. I spoke to officials about this yesterday. I question why it takes us so long to test and trial between the arrival of a train and its deployment. I have asked my officials to examine that. We obviously have to make sure that everything is safe but as some timelines are almost a year between arrival and deployment, I question whether we could shorten that.

Another key infrastructural thing we need to get right is the deployment of new charging infrastructure. A lot of the existing DART network already has overhead wires, but when the line is extended to the likes of Drogheda we need to consider how we install charging for new battery electric trains. That will be critical. We need to determine how we can do the same in Wicklow in order to extend the DART service in that region. That could also be applied further to Cork, in terms of having chargers in Midleton and Mallow. That is the key thing to get right next.

See this speech in context