Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

Maidin mhaith, a Aire Stáit. Is lá álainn é ag deireadh mhí Aibreáin. Ceapaim gur lá iontach é le dul ar thuras traenach. Is é sin an t-ábhar I am talking about today. It is a great day for a train journey but if one lives in the newer areas in my constituency, such as Adamstown, and if one is an IT professional who needs to go to the likes of Galway, one has to go all the way back into Heuston Station or wait a long time to get a connection to Portarlington. It really is not worth one's while so we need an intercity stop. There is always a question as to where an intercity route would stop in suburban areas. About 12,000 people live in Adamstown. It is a strategic development zone that has a larger population than Portarlington, which has a train station, and Kildare town.

If you were to start in Adamstown and try to get a train to the likes of Galway, for example, it would probably take between 40 minutes and one hour to get to Heuston Station or you would be doing a lot of waiting around trying to time a journey in the other direction. Adamstown definitely has a need for an intercity train station or, if not Adamstown, Kishoge, which is in the Clonburris strategic development zone. While Adamstown has 8,000 houses, Clonburris will have between 8,500 to 11,000. Adamstown’s projected population is 25,000. Clonburris could have anything up to 30,000. Adamstown is a lot more developed.

Some €4 million was wasted on the redevelopment of the Kishoge Station because it was not opened in 2009 when it could have been to cater for the existing population of Lucan. The wider Lucan population is almost 60,000. In that context, there is a huge catchment area for train use but such usage will only be encouraged if it is convenient. I know quite a few IT professionals – there is a diverse demographic in the Adamstown area - who car pool regularly every week in order to go to Galway to do their work. Some people drive rather than car pool, however. They are clogging up the roads when they could get the train. No one is going to spend 40 to 50 minutes on a bus going to Heuston station to then get the train back out again. There is a pressing need for these towns on the outskirts of Dublin, although they are in Dublin, to be treated in their own right as part of an intercity service.

I note that, coming from Galway, there is one stop-off in the morning at nearby Hazelhatch and Celbridge. That area has a much smaller population than the already growing Adamstown population of 12,000 people. I ask the Minister of State and his colleagues, in discussions with the NTA, to look at this, particularly as he has his hand on the lever, so to speak.

I will talk more about departmental funding after the Minister of State’s contribution. There is a pressing and worthwhile need to at least have morning and evening peak stop-offs at either Adamstown or Clonburris, although probably Adamstown in light of the existing population. Try it out, see how it works and see whether it increases the numbers using our intercity train services.

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