Frank Feighan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Brendan Griffin for coming to the House. As always he is prompt and I appreciate his presence in the Chamber.

There have been a number of plans and proposals for a high-speed rail service between Dublin and Belfast on both sides of the Border. The objective is that the journey time between Dublin and Belfast would be reduced to 90 minutes. The direct train between Belfast Central Station and Connolly Station in Dublin takes more than two hours at present. One of the proposals is that the Northern Ireland transport company, Translink, and Iarnród Éireann would work to provide a non-stop, 90-minute service, departing at hourly intervals. The Project Ireland 2040 plan also commits to a feasibility study for a high-speed rail link between the two largest cities on the island.

Mr. Keith Moffat, the former chief executive of Translink, has said that the cost of such a service involving 125 mph trains and an upgrade of the track would be in the region of €733 million. A proposal for this cross-Border service was contained in one report confirming that a high-speed, high-frequency service could be economically viable. There is some momentum behind this. Five local authorities - Dublin City Council, Fingal County Council, Louth County Council, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council and Belfast City Council - also commissioned their own report. That report states that the improved rail connectivity offers the opportunity to tackle some of the challenges facing the island of Ireland in the future, which include the impact of Brexit and attracting foreign direct investment. The report notes that the current service between Dublin and Belfast is slow and infrequent. It outlines that there are currently eight trains a day in each direction, taking two hours and 15 minutes to make the 100 mile journey. The report notes that by international standards that this is slow for a railway connecting two major cities and its vision is for a 60-minute journey time to bring the service to a level on a par with the train service between Frankfurt and Cologne, a service on which I have travelled many times.

The local authority also examined other case studies such as the high-speed rail service between Lisbon and Porto in Portugal and the service between Amsterdam and Rotterdam in Holland. If we want an agreed Ireland, by having a high-speed rail network between the two largest cities in this country, we would send a signal that we have an objective in connecting the two main cities on this island.