James Bannon (Fine Gael)

The guidelines consider Longford and Portlaoise, with smaller towns and villages, to be further down the list. We were disappointed with this at the time but we are doing our best in our respective local authorities to push Longford, Westmeath and Roscommon forward under the spatial strategy.

The huge shortfall in investment in public transport in the BMW region was highlighted in the ESRI's mid-term evaluation of the NDP, the report of which was published in 2003. This report highlighted the fact that investment in public transport has been 43% of that forecast in the BMW region and 149% of the forecast for the south and east region. There was a massive underspend of €223 million on public transport in the BMW region at the mid-term stage of the programme.

In 2002, the Department of Transport established a rural transport initiative and provided €3 million in funding for 34 rural transport projects, mainly to private operators to run the projects. In 2003 and 2004, this money was continued but, in budget 2005, the Government gave only a marginal increase to the initiative and permitted its continuation on a pilot basis for a further two years, until 2006. There is no guarantee of funding beyond that year. This gives an additional €475,000 to the scheme. However, the rural transport initiative co-ordinators sought €5 million per annum. The miserly increase barely takes account of inflation and means there can be no expansion of the initiative. It has remained the same since 2002. An average of one local bus service in each county is wholly inadequate.

The re-opening of the western rail corridor was dismissed in the strategic rail review as too expensive when it was costed at €572 million. The West on Track group has put the cost at €230 million while Galway County Council's director of services maintains it could be reopened for €215 million. The western rail corridor potentially could develop a cross radial service as well as commuter services for Limerick, Sligo and Galway. Senator MacSharry has referred to this on a number of occasions. It has the potential to connect the cities, towns and many rural communities along its route and also to expand the transport of Irish exports to international markets by using ports such as Rosslare and Waterford. This rail line could serve as a vital link between Sligo, Limerick and Waterford ports. Substandard roads currently service these ports and an effective rail link could overcome this problem, with the added bonus of taking heavy goods trucks off the roads.

A similar development, and something which I have campaigned for over the years, is a central rail line linking the towns of the midlands, particularly those within the triangular gateway, including Longford, Roscommon, Portlaoise and Cavan. Currently, if one wishes to make a connection to Cork from Longford, one must travel to Portlaoise, a journey of 70 miles. In the case of Cavan, the journey is more than 100 miles. The recent enterprise strategy group report recommended that there should be increased spending on public transport in the west. The western rail corridor would fit into this requirement. A figure of €250 million is the estimated cost of the project, which should be seen in the context of the hundreds of millions spent annually on our roads programme and other infrastructure projects such as the Dublin Port tunnel or the Luas.

The Council of the West has criticised the Government for its neglect of the BMW region. The council says planned NDP spending on the BMW region's infrastructure was under target by 14% towards the end of 2003. Spending on roads was only 62.8% of the figure forecast, while expenditure on roads in the south and east was 143% of the figure forecast.

In budget 2004, the Government announced the decentralisation of 10,300 workers out of Dublin and into the regions. The proposed locations completely ignored the spatial strategy guidelines. In November 2004, the Government reneged on its promise of decentralisation by cutting 29 regional towns from the first phase of the decentralisation programme. This was a major climb-down from its controversial plan to move more than 10,000 State officials from Dublin to the regions before the end of 2007. Only 20 towns will benefit in the initial stages of the project up to 2008 while other towns are left in limbo as to when, if ever, they will benefit from decentralisation. Towns in the BMW region to lose out include Cavan, Buncrana, Donegal, Gweedore, Ballinasloe, Clifden, Claremorris and Roscommon.