Railway campaigner calls for greater share of Irish government funding

A massive funding commitment from the Irish government to benefit infrastructure projects in Northern Ireland has missed an opportunity for improving rail travel, a campaign group has said.

The €800 million sum announced this week will contribute €600 million towards the proposed upgrade of the A5 road and €50 million for the redevelopment of Casement Park.

A further €12.5million (£10.68m) was also promised to create an hourly train service from Dublin to Belfast, doubling the current capacity.

While the unprecedented scale of the funding has largely been embraced – especially by politicians and road safety campaigners living along the A5 - rail user Andrew McDonald (24) from Antrim and part of the Fund The NINE campaign group said he had hoped for a greater focus towards public transport.

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“I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed by the Irish government’s funding, just that they want to put so much money into Northern Ireland roads but so little into connecting their capital city and ours,” he said.

“You can’t expect to increase these services without going the whole nine yards. There’s a lot of work that needs done.”

He added that speeding up rail journey times between Dublin to Belfast, which currently take around two hours and 20 minutes, would still take still much more investment.

“Especially when coming into Dublin you have dual track rail that’s already clogged up with inner-city dart services never mind the Enterprise.”

Acknowledging the A5 was one of the deadliest roads in Ireland, he argued that restoring the railway line between Portadown to Derry should also be part of the conversation.

“Without that rail connection, you’re only giving people the option to drive or take the bus…that’s only going to create increased demand for cars in the long term,” he said.

“When you have an alternative, you bring down the road deaths permanently.”

A total of 50 people have died on the A5 since an upgrade was first agreed in 2007, but Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he expects work to finally begin this year.

Linking New Buildings to Aughnacloy, campaigners have said that as well as improving safety it will slash journey times between Dublin and the northwest as well as bringing huge economic benefits.

Last year, a draft report from the all-island strategic rail review had made restoring the Derry to Portadown line one its main recommendations – which would link the towns of Strabane, Omagh and Dungannon as well greatly improving connectivity from the northwest to Belfast and Dublin.

The 25-year plan was estimated to cost as much around €35bn, with suggestions that Stormont would meet a quarter of the costs.

Other recommendations had included reinstating lines from Portadown to Armagh, Lisburn and Newry as well as connecting Belfast International, Dublin and Shannon airports to the rail network as well as increasing rail-freight capacity to take more trucks off the roads.

“The only kind of issue I have with that review is that the timelines are so insanely long,” Mr McDonald said.

“It shouldn’t take that long to do all those things. You could really do everything in the all-island rail review for Northern Ireland by 2035, but it would take the government prioritising rail in the way they’re doing with roads at the minute.”