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

It will be available to the Deputy in written format in any case. If I can answer his question directly, the strategic rail review has been very public for over a year and a half. We had to go to a strategic environmental assessment. We decided that, in advance of the Assembly returning in the North, we would publish it because we had to go into that public consultation, so the details are very clear. That consultation process has finished. In the coming weeks, we will, in my mind, subject to our Northern colleagues also agreeing it, be able to publish and then really focus on the delivery end. We need to deliver now. To do that, we have employed the European Investment Bank, EIB, to do a review of how we would prioritise which projects to deliver.

I will focus on one aspect of this which I think the Deputy will be interested in, namely, the western rail corridor. It is probably one of the more contentious elements because in the past, and up to this date, when you asked the system if we should reopen the western rail corridor, it would say it does not make economic sense and the business case is desperate. I think it was looked at with too narrow a focus, just at passenger rail services, which we need to reintroduce on the line, but it did not take into account the potential development of rail freight as an option the country. That would make the economic case for the western rail corridor, not just on the section from Athenry to Claremorris, but a much wider western rail corridor, running all the way from Ballina, down the west coast to Limerick and then to Waterford and Wexford. In that context, it makes strategic sense.

I hope to make that case in the coming months and to move the project up the prioritisation order as part of our balanced regional development and economic revival of the west. I will do so because I believe industries will want to come where there is a decarbonising option and high-quality public transport and rail freight services which allow economic development to occur on the western rail corridor. That is not the conventional wisdom and it is not commonly accepted, but I believe that argument needs to be had and made in the coming months so we give a clear signal that this economic project will go ahead with priority.

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