Martin Conway (Fine Gael)

The Minister of State is very welcome to the House. I know he fully understands the benefits of rail travel. I also wish to be associated with the comments regarding Jim Meade. I used meet Jim regularly enough travelling the early morning trains from Ennis to Dublin. He is a good Clare man. I also wish Ms Mary Considine, the incoming CEO of Irish Rail, the very best of luck. She is another Clare woman. The future of our rail service is in good hands.

I have three issues. First, I 100% support the Minister of State, Senator Kyne and others on the western rail corridor. When the Ennis to Galway section was opened, people said it would never work or be used. To be fair, at the start, it was not regularly used.Now, though, you cannot get a seat on it in the mornings because of the amount of students travelling to Galway, the amount of people who are working in Galway and travelling from Ennis, and the people from Galway travelling to Limerick and Ennis as well. It is absolutely fantastic to see how successful it has been. We could do with another railway station or two on the line and with taking over some of the crossings to speed it up a little bit. Crusheen is an obvious railway station. An economic benefit study was done recently, so I would be interested to hear the Minister of State's views on Crusheen railway station. The Moyross station is happening, which is very welcome. We need more frequency of services between Galway and Limerick specifically, Ennis and Limerick, and Ennis and Galway. There are flooding challenges at Ballycar. An interdepartmental and interagency report was done on that. It will cost a few million euro but at some stage - hopefully, later rather than sooner - we are going to see the flooding back and buses transporting people, which is not ideal and not what we need to be seeing.

I travel by train every week, sometimes daily. One of the benefits are the staff. The Iarnród Éireann staff are outstanding. Obviously, everyone would like to able to get a cup of coffee on the train and it would be nice to see that service return.

There is a discrepancy. When I am in Dublin, I stay in Maynooth a lot of the time and I get the trains in. People tell me on the trains that it is good value, yet it is dearer to get the train from Ennis to Limerick or from Ennis to Galway. These journeys are more or less the same distance. We need to see a kind of standardised rail cost and ticket fare. Why should somebody living in Ennis be paying more to go to Limerick, which is more or less the same distance as from somewhere like Maynooth or Kilcock to Dublin? That needs to be looked at in the upcoming review.

Are there any plans for a rail link from Ennis to Shannon and Shannon to Limerick? That would be very useful. I welcome the fact that we are looking at developing the Foynes to Limerick route. I know the Leas-Chathaoirleach would agree with me that a DART-type system around Limerick would be very useful because the structure is there. It would make sense if there was light rail system supporting Limerick city.

Investing in rail ticks a lot of boxes and it achieves a lot. Rail transports a lot of people very quickly. The train services out to Kildare in the evenings and in the mornings are full. You can barely get standing room, so this proves it works. From a Clare perspective, I would like to see more frequent services between Ennis, Limerick and Galway, I would like to see the Crusheen railway station back on the agenda, and I would like to see more frequent services between the two cities and Ennis.