Rail services and line closures
Deputy Mattie McGrath raises rural rail investment and fears for lines and stations in Limerick, Waterford and the Nenagh-Ballybrophy area. The Taoiseach says no railway line closures are proposed and cites existing studies showing passenger numbers and financial performance requirements.
All the talk of Dublin-centric policy and the Taoiseach's discussion earlier-----
Comment on this
It is the programme for Government; rural Ireland and investment in our railways.
Comment on this
It is page 128 on services for transport.
Comment on this
It is. I beg to differ having checked it before I came to the House. The important thing is investment in rail, which Deputy Collins raised a minute ago in reference to lines which were closed half a century or a century ago. We read now that our railways are under threat again in Limerick, Waterford and along the Nenagh-Ballybrophy line. There are eight stations involved there, which means eight derelict or semi-derelict buildings, many of which are listed. We cannot allow this haemorrhage to take place. The Taoiseach mentioned money and the HSE and it is not all about that. Iarnród Éireann should be compelled to carry out a feasibility study and change the timetables so that services run at times suited to the demands of passengers, including business people. Instead, services are being run into the ground with buses being put on half the time. When that happens, there is no rail trip to record in the statistics. I ask the Taoiseach to ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to engage with transport stakeholders to rejuvenate these services rather than to scrap them.
Comment on this
As I said yesterday, there are no proposals to close any railway lines in the country. Given the fact that none was closed during a very dark period for our country economically, we do not propose to do so into the future. A lot of studies have been done already, in case the Deputy has not read them yet.
Comment on this
There is the rail review, the AECOM study and six or seven others, all of which set out how many passengers use each line and what level of increase in passenger numbers is needed for the lines to wash their faces. No one expects any line to cover its capital costs of constructing rails, stations and trains but we want to get to a point where the fares paid by passengers at least cover the running costs, which is not the case for the vast majority of railway lines.