Gerry Reynolds
Question:200 Mr. G. Reynolds asked the Minister for Public Enterprise when she last travelled by train within the State; and if she has satisfied herself with the safety standards and the service provided. [1561/02]
Written Answers. - Ministerial Travel.
I like to travel on the railway as often as my schedule allows to experience and observe first hand the level of service and safety. My most recent journey was by DART from Dublin to Malahide to open the Malahide Heritage Garden on 8 August 2001.
Since taking office, I have also travelled on most inter-city services, including Sligo-Dublin, Athlone-Galway, Athlone-Ballina-Westport, Cork-Dublin, Mallow-Dublin and on several occasions I travelled on the Enterprise service to Belfast.
On each occasion, I found the journey to be very pleasant and while I am not qualified to expertly judge railway safety, I saw nothing that concerned me. This Government has invested some 368 million since 1999 in the improvement of the safety of Iarnród Éireann's infrastructure and safety management systems under the railway safety programme 1999-2003. This Government has also made significant investment in acquisition of new rolling stock, refurbishment of stations and improvement of other non-safety related infrastructure. It is only reasonable then that an improvement in the level of safety and service on the Iarnród Éireann network should be expected by the users of those services.
I have commissioned a number of safety audits of the Iarnród Éireann network since 1998 and published the report of the most recent audit in August of last year. The report concluded that Iarnród Éireann had made substantial progress in improving the safety of railway infrastructure since their first audit in 1998 and that the pace of improvement had increased since their previous audit in 2000. IRMS added that the hard issues of life expired infrastructure were being tackled effectively by Iarnród Éireann and that the result should be a reliable and maintainable railway in the long-term.
I personally took great comfort from those remarks and I believe they confirm the value of the investment this Government has made and continues to make in the railways.