Rail Network
Seanad Éireann — 2022-10-25
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Malcolm Byrne (FF), Cultural and Educational Panel

The Minister of State's response is somewhat positive. I think we all look forward to reading the all-island strategic rail revieww. I think it will encourage a lot of debate about how we can more effectively use rail in this country. I think we could see the reopening of the railway line with a parallel greenway connecting to the very successful Waterford greenway operating over the course of this decade. I think we are now realising that the future is in rail. There is enormous potential there because there is a rail line currently in existence and, as the Minister of State said, it is being maintained quite well by Irish Rail at present.
We need to be ambitious. I certainly support the extension of the western rail corridor, but we need to look at connecting all these parts of the country. I think a real possibility now exists to reopen the south-east rail link as well to provide that link between Rosslare, Wexford and Waterford. I hope that, coming out of the strategic rail review, the Government will consider it positively.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2022-10-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:12+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-10-25