Railway Safety Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01 ============================================================ Ciarán Ahern (LAB), Dublin South-West I welcome the Bill, which the Labour Party will be supporting. While it is largely technical in nature, it is important. It is kind of crazy that it has taken this long to get around to aligning the statutory limits for drugs and alcohol for rail workers and train drivers with those in road traffic legislation. Deputy Wall will be raising some serious health and safety concerns about overcrowding on commuter lines between Kildare and Dublin. The current system of self-regulation when it comes to safety on our railways is not fit for a modern rail line or system. Therefore, we welcome these changes. As the Minister knows well, we talk about road safety frequently in this House, and rightly so given the near decade-high figures for deaths on our roads. There are tragedies every day on our roads. Thankfully, rail safety is not something we have to talk about too often in this House. Thankfully, rail safety is not something we have to talk about too often in this House. Like Deputies Keogh and Pa Daly, I want to say that we are thinking about Eoin Doyle, the 12-year old boy who tragically lost his life, in early September, in a rail collision near Ballyhaunis in County Mayo. As I said, collisions involving trains and other vehicles are thankfully pretty rare, which makes Eoin's death all the more tragic. My understanding is that visibility at the crossing where the incident occurred is poor. I am aware that the CCR is investigating the circumstances around the accident. I hope that some measures are taken at that crossing, and elsewhere across the country where there are issues, to improve visibility and safety at these crossings. On behalf of the Labour Party, I extend our sincere condolences to Eoin's family and friends. As I said, the Labour Party will be supporting this Bill. I will not dwell on the Bill itself because it is pretty straightforward. I do want to touch on our rail infrastructure more broadly. In this House we all know the importance of investing in rail. Projects like DART and Luas have been game changers for Dublin. Back in the day they had their detractors. Some of them still darken in the door of this building but I think we would be hard pressed to find anyone nowadays who would say we should not have built them. They have been enormously successful. I have every faith that future rail projects will be equally successful for Dublin and other cities and towns across the country. They will help to tackle congestion, reduce emissions, improve health, support housing development, connect cities and regions, give people in rural Ireland, in particular, a much-needed alternative to the private car, and help with the cost of living along the way. We all get that. It is in that context that we find it bewildering that Government has been so slow to move on some projects that are literally ready to go. In some cases, they have been actually pushed back and delayed. DART+ South West received planning permission almost two years ago, in November 2024, but funding still has not been released. This is a service that could bring 20,000 people in each direction every hour. Imagine the difference it would make to the likes of Clondalkin, Lucan, Adamstown and Celbridge. At a time of huge construction in Clonburris and other areas, it would be enormous. Yet, the Government's NDP review has pushed construction beyond 2030, which is six years after it got planning permission. This is not just a transport issue. If we are serious about building homes and new communities, which we have to and want to, then we have to have the infrastructure to support them. The same issue applies to the Luas extension out to Finglas. Planning permission has been granted. Judicial reviews were withdrawn earlier this year. Yet, we have been given a date of 2029 before construction will get under way. TII has said that if the Government moves quickly on a funding decision, construction could be brought forward to 2028. I urge the Minister to do everything he can to accelerate that. I know it is on his desk. The Finglas Luas is a great example of an interconnected transport service, with links to heavy rail and bus at Broombridge and the park-and-ride facility at St. Margaret's Road. We must encourage the use of more park-and-ride facilities across the country. We need more of them, and we want to incentivise people to use them. My Labour Party colleagues, Deputy Robert O'Donoghue and Councillor Mark Boland, have proposed that tax-saver tickets could be extended to park-and-ride parking costs, to put a little more money back into the pockets of hard-pressed commuters who are trying to do the right thing and avail our rail services rather than driving. It is exactly the sort of public transport infrastructure that we want to see more of, one where these sort of links to other services exist. It is the type of project that deserves to be expedited insofar as is possible. The Government cannot tell us on the one hand that infrastructure delivery is an urgent national priority, and on the other hand, allow major public transport projects to move repeatedly between dates and phases and funding envelopes and so on. Public transport infrastructure is tied up with how we address so many of the other major issues we face as a country, whether it is housing, congestion, climate change, and so on. There are economic, environmental, and social costs associated with failing to urgently deliver on public transport projects. I will finish on a positive note. I commend the Minister on his progress so far in getting MetroLink over the line after all these years. It is a big cost but we know the benefits of MetroLink will far outweigh the price of building it. As has been said on numerous occasions, the cheapest time to build it was 20 years ago and the next cheapest time is now. It will be transformative for Dublin, particularly those in north County Dublin. As I always do when discussing MetroLink, I would appeal to the Minister to begin planning an extension south of the Grand Canal through Dublin South-West, out to Tallaght. The Minister has told me before that the greater Dublin transport strategy review will commence next year, and a new feasibility study will be carried out as part of that. Any feasibility study is welcome but I would ask that it be carried out independently so that mistakes we feel were made in a previous study are not repeated. My understanding is that the previous feasibility study will form part of the evidence base for the next one, so that is a little bit concerning. I would like the Minister to watch out for that. Obviously, we have not seen the terms of reference yet but I would hope that a more holistic approach could be taken to this feasibility study. The business case for deciding on an extension of the line to Dublin South-West should not necessarily be considered only in terms of current passenger numbers. It should also look at the opportunities that this would open up in terms of housing and development as a city-building project for that part of the city. Overall, of course, we welcome that the MetroLink line extension will be a priority focus of the transport strategy review that is long overdue but I strongly urge the Minister to have it carried out by an independent body. --- 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/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-10-01