Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I welcome the Minister and thank him for his commitment to public transport in general and rail in particular. I join Senator Garvey in giving due recognition to what he has achieved. However, I want to include in my comments decisions taken by Mary O’Rourke when she was Minister back in the late 1990s when she succeeded at a difficult time to effectively turn the train around because there had been a constant lack of investment which was just grinding down the service to a point where it was not even getting the care and maintenance and from a safety perspective, it would almost have to be discontinued and closed. In fairness to her, in her own inimitable way, she managed to cajole, browbeat and muscle up against some strong people at the time who did not want to spend the money on it because they did not see the benefit. It was all about the car and roads and motorways at the time. That was where the focus was. She succeeded in changing thinking at Government level on investing in key infrastructure and she made the point that you either invest in it or you close and she was not for closing. At a later stage, Seamus Brennan put a lot of effort into the Luas. We all know where that is at now. I recall being on a transport committee where there was a lot of criticism about the disruption being caused by laying the Luas tracks. I understood the concerns of small to medium enterprises but to scramble eggs, they have to be cracked first.The Government at the time stood by that. The Minister has taken a very proactive approach. I really like his thinking when he talks about investing in infrastructure. I have had battles with Government Departments for far too long about the great cost-benefit analysis. The cost-benefit analysis is one of the greatest tools to prevent things happening. It just measures the benefit based on where things are at currently. If we just take a flat earth and run the slide rule over it, it makes no economic sense, but that is devoid of the appropriate thinking. If we invest in the infrastructure and bring it up to a standard, people will follow. Covid has taught us one of the great lessons that if we do not have to be in the capital city, many people will choose not to do so. They will work from home and commute a few days a week if they have to be in the office or whatever. We need to improve the journey times between some of our regions. From a Clare perspective, if you live close to Ennis, getting from Ennis to Dublin is slow, because there are issues with the connection between Limerick and Limerick Junction. I know there is work under way with a view to speeding that up or perhaps double-tracking part of the route. I hope that is not a decision that has to be dragged out forever. We have had the same issue with connecting Shannon with Limerick, by way of a rail corridor there. Going back 15 to 20 years, Booz Allen Hamilton produced a strategic report that effectively costed it into a place where it would never happen. The Minister has looked at it again. I think there are ways around making that happen. Opening up that facility in Moyross would open up opportunities for people to travel from other parts of County Clare to commute effectively to college, because it is in close proximity to Technological University of the Shannon, TUS, at the site of the former Limerick Institute of Technology. We have to look at how we move students from there over to the University of Limerick in a manner that makes it possible for them, in some cases, to live at home or to use Ennis, Sixmilebridge, Shannon or wherever as student accommodation. Not every kid lives on campus in UCD or Trinity College. They travel from all over the city. They come from other parts of the country. We should not be shoehorning people into tight areas when we can provide good-quality, low-carbon public transport. We have to get real about what it is that we are trying to do, and look at the consumer and how consumer choice might change and follow if the infrastructure is there.

I remember some time ago, going back a number of years, talking to Dick Fearn, who was the CEO of Iarnród Éireann. He made the point that often, rail companies focus on keeping the engines running. They are principally engineers that run rail companies because of the large-scale engineering operations that are involved. They do not always focus, or at that stage they were not focusing, on where the consumer is at. It speaks to what Senator Garvey has said. It was not about timing, it was about getting the train to and from a place and getting the engines running and all of that. I must say that Jimmy Meade is a breath of fresh of air from that perspective. The people around him, Barry Kenny and others, are very well focused on where the consumer demand is, how the service might be improved to meet the needs of the consumer, rather than saying the trains have to go to and from particular points and asking whether they have carriages and the engines, which of itself is a hugely difficult logistic and engineering problem.

That change has happened. The Government is now focused very intensively on providing the funds to put new infrastructure in place to open up stations. As my colleagues, Senators Craughwell, Conway and others, have been highlighting for a very long time, we need to open that station in Crusheen. Crusheen is to Ennis what Moyross is to Limerick. There is a lot of residential development taking place in that area. It is outside the town. If we put appropriate parking in place, people will come there from other parts of the county just to utilise the service and park their cars there.

Senator Garvey is right. She has talked about the extreme in terms of the electric bike and all of that. There are a lot of people who perhaps have not gone that far yet but would be happy to park their cars if there was appropriate parking. I think we have to look at that as a first step in achieving that modal shift. The issue of people driving to Dublin or parts of the country could be adequately addressed now through the rail network if we have appropriate parking for them. Where I live, if I have to drive to Limerick or to Ennis I have to have appropriate parking because it is too far to cycle or to take an electric bike. We have not been good at providing appropriate parking. The situation in Limerick was pretty difficult. People are advised not to leave their cars overnight but if I have to be in Dublin, where am I going to leave my car? We must put the necessary security systems in place. There were incidents of car theft in the past. We need to look at the whole journey from the time people leave home to when they get to their destination, and fix the pieces along the way. That is really important.

I have talked about making the modal shift in the past. The Minister is going in the right direction in reducing public transport fares. I think we should do what they did in Luxembourg, and eliminate fares all together for a period. I accept that it would be a costly measure and would put more pressure on rail but if we could do that and could set aside the money required, we could say there would be no fares for a five-year period and fares could be introduced gradually commensurate with pay or where people are at. If people get to see that they can operate without their cars, we will have made significant change.

I look to the students that are present, and I have an annoyance all the time with the way we deal with school transport. We set these limits. Students can access school transport if they live within 1 km or 2 km of the school and if they are closer than that, they cannot. We go through all this fuss every September. They are the next generation and we have to make it easy for them to get on a bus or public transport. We should be eliminating all those barriers. There should be a period of five years where there are no charges on public transport. If the Government does so, it will take away the incentive for the 19-, 20- or 21-year-old to even contemplate purchasing a car. It will get them into the mind-set of using public transport. There are probably old fogies like me and others who will hold onto the car for as long as we can and who will use public transport when it suits us or when it is appropriate but we are in a groove. While we need to move towards using electric vehicles and all of that, we should be looking to the next generation. We should be looking at the investment in infrastructure that makes it possible for people to move and change their behaviour in a way that will benefit the environment in the long run.