Letter to the editor: Rural areas deserve spending on transport

Editor,

€24 billion was announced for transport infrastructure last week, to be spent between now and 2030 under the revised National Development Plan. The Dept of Transport are now looking for shovel-ready projects.

I have asked our local TDs to bring the Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien and Sean Canney, Minister of State at the Department of Transport with responsibility for International and Road Transport, Logistics, Rail and Ports, to Killucan station to see first hand a shovel-ready, urgently required transport project for this region that would cost just over €10 million, as much as half of which would be reimbursed from Europe.

Killucan station would be just 0.04 percent (1/600th) of that €24 billion – it’s negligible. It would give 16,000 people within 10km of the station a one-hour commute to Dublin rather than two-hour bus journey on a scant service.

We have two percent of the country’s population in Westmeath so it is only fair and right we get some investment.

Straight away, the government committed €2 billion to the Dublin metro as just a start. Surely rural transport deserves some consideration; it’s the least we deserve from this new transport package.

They also need to get the Mullingar to Athlone rail line up and running.

I am still waiting for a response to my June letter to Irish Rail asking them to proceed with the business case for Killucan station in conjunction with Westmeath County Council.

Long before the metro at a final cost of up to an estimated €23 billion, the Mullingar to Athlone line at a tiny fraction of that would join up whole country in a county we have 2 percent of country’s population.

Why should rural Ireland always play second fiddle to Dublin City when we can connect vast swathes of the country. Killucan station and the mullingar to Athlone line represent a small part of this new budget but a massive shot in the arm to public safety transport infrastructure in Ireland.

Yours,

Denis Leonard,

Chair,

Killucan Kinnegad Transport Lobby Group.