Lack of trains and lack of catering on trains.

Purple said:
Yea, for 40 years the lunatics in the IRA made sure that most of the border crossings were closed and the only connection to the rest of this country was a small sliver where it met Sligo. Now the same clowns are complaining about lack of investment and infrastructure without acknowledging that they are largely to blame.
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They also kidnapped, extorted and murdered businessmen from industrialists to builders who took on State work, as builders tend to do to keep the show on the road.
 
T McGibney said:
How many Penneys/Primarks are there in that region for example?
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I dont know Tommy. Strange metric.
Purple said:
They are about the same size and have about the same population
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Case in point - comparing donegal to kerry. Should they not have access to similar infrastructure?

Theres no good or clear argument against it just pronoucements on population and cost. Nonsense really. A really key point that is overlooked by nae sayers is simply equality. Equality of access to services. I used the word neglect earlier and thats what it is. Neglect by politicians and by the state. No willpower to change this inequality. The north west needs some healy raes.
 
ArthurMcB said:
The point re needing a population to support it is understood. My point is that arguably there is a sufficient population along a dublin to NW route to support it in as much as there is for other routes.
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There's a ~€3bn project in the procurement stage to bring the 40km Navan line back into service, and that's with the old lines and stations in place. There's a lot of people commuting to Dublin for work daily from Navan, I'd suspect the numbers doing so from Donegal are significantly lower.

There was some speculation that an extension to Cavan could follow on after the Navan line is brought back, but if you look at where the line used to run, there's a lot of housing and commercial properties that would have to be removed, and that's not cheap.
 
ArthurMcB said:
Case in point - comparing donegal to kerry. Should they not have access to similar infrastructure?

Theres no good or clear argument against it just pronoucements on population and cost.
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There is no logical reason why the whole population should have similar access to similar services. I don't know of any country in the world who goes anywhere close to that. When I lived in Dublin every conceivable service was on my doorstep. but that made sense due to the population density and the relatively low cost of providing such services. Where I live now I have a fraction of those services within easy reach, but to me that makes sense, it would represent very poor value to taxpayers to spend the kind of money required to deliver anything approaching that level of service.
 
If the service isnt there nobody can use it and if no catering is supplied on existing service nobody can buy it. Looks like there are openings for our rail service and their catering service. And all advice here is free of charge.
 
Leo said:
There was a rail link between where I'm from and where I went to college for a number of years. Now, I never took that train because the times were not convenient, the bus was cheaper and saved a considerable walk. The presence of a train didn't stop me leaving that area as soon as I graduated, grads chase jobs, most of those aren't in the likes of Sligo.
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So your logic is that because a substandard train service didn't persuade you personally to take the train or stay in the area where you're from, the existence of a quality train service would have no influence on the decision of young people to leave the area? Leaving aside the IT (or ATU or whatever it's called) there's more than a few jobs in pharmaceuticals and healthcare in Sligo, as well as all the usual graduate opportunities such as law, accounting, civil service, etc: https://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie/choose-sligo

rob oyle said:
In a circumstance of limited financial resources, deciding what to prioritise is important and I can't see rail links to Donegal being justified. I might like the idea but I can't argue for it.
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Similar shortsightedness is why we've had a housing crisis going on for well over a decade with no end in sight, and why we've a legal system which effectively enables any idiot anywhere to stop anything from happening anywhere if they so choose. Not unique to the republic in fairness, in the North the courts recently said straight out in the context of the A5 that people dying was less important than correct form filling.

There will always, always, always, be very compelling arguments against making long term investments today due to the short term sacrifices required. If the contributors to this forum consistently took that approach then every money makeover would invite an overwhelming consensus that paying into a pension should be rejected in favour of buying a new car on the grounds that a new car provides a benefit today rather than having to wait several decades to get the benefit of the pension. Most people here recognise how ridiculous such a consensus would be....
 
Leo said:
There is no logical reason why the whole population should have similar access to similar services
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What you are saying here is that there is no logical reason why 1 region should have similar access to the services that another region has access to (this is partly my argument which i assume you are trying to dismiss). Again, the population card.

I disagree with this.
 
ArthurMcB said:
Case in point - comparing donegal to kerry. Should they not have access to similar infrastructure?
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You're ignoring the historical context.

Donegal is starting from zero for historical reasons. It's no longer comparable to anywhere with an existing mainline track.
 
AlbacoreA said:
You're ignoring the historical context.

Donegal is starting from zero for historical reasons. It's no longer comparable to anywhere with an existing mainline track.
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It never was.

Donegal never had even a kilometre of mainline or standard gauge track at any time, even at the heigh of the expansion of the Irish rail system. Kerry, by contrast, had extensive standard gauge mainline tracks from the late nineteenth century.

This wasn't random, and it wasn't the result of some anti-Donegal conspiracy. In economic, social and geographic terms, mainline railways in and to Kerry made sense in a way that wasn't true for Donegal. That hasn't changed.

What did change was partition. The limited rail system that Donegal did have made sense in terms of Donegal's place in its own region. It linked Donegal to Derry and Strabane and, indirectly but effectively, to Belfast. Borders are inherently economically depressing, on both sides. This is true even for friendly, uncontested borders; it's doubly true for borders that are contentious. Partition meant that Donegal, always geographically remote from Dublin, now became politically remote from its immediately neighbouring areas, and from the cities of Derry and Belfast, with which it had always been more economically intergrated than it had with Dublin.

If the capital had been there in mid-twentieth century Ireland (which it wasn't), there might have been a case for constructing mainline rail in and to Donegal, in order to connect Donegal better with Dublin. It would have to have been routed through Sligo, and the line would never have been economically viable, and the passenger service to Dublin would have been extremely poor, but it could perhaps have been politically justified as a nation-building project. But the money wasn't there. Plus, politically, the government's objective was always the ending of partition, so proposals for major infrastructure projects premised on the permanence of partition were never likely to find much traction.

Now we are a richer country, and the economic border has largely been dissolved. Much as I love trains, and would ride them everywhere if I could, I have to acknowledge that, if we were to spend money improving the economic situation of Donegal, it's unlikely that a mainline rail link to Dublin would be the most advantageous way of spending that money. Remedying the harms done by partition would involve integrating Donegal more effectively into its immediate region, and improving transport links to Belfast and Larne.
 
ArthurMcB said:
What you are saying here is that there is no logical reason why 1 region should have similar access to the services that another region has access to (this is partly my argument which i assume you are trying to dismiss). Again, the population card.
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It's more the viability card. Just as there's no justification for a large teaching hospital in Donegal there's also no justification for a rail link. There just aren't enough people to use it.
I live in Dublin and frequently go to Rosslare Strand. There's a train station 5 minutes walk from where I stay in Rosslare. I've never taken the train and never will. It's three and a half hours on the train and one hour and forty five minutes drive.
 
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