A consultant engaged to do a feasibility study on creating railway linkages between Cork and the west has described the population densities of Connacht as too low to sustain a viable service.
The finding has been rejected by a Connacht-based railway action committee, which is engaged in a long-running campaign to restore the Sligo-Galway line as part of a radial system linking with Ennis, Limerick and Cork. Mr Brendan Lynch, an economic consultant, was engaged by a committee formed by the Mid-West Regional Authority in Limerick and Clare which is focusing on a rail spur being developed to Shannon from the existing but under-developed Limerick to Ennis line.
The LASER (Limerick to Shannon Express Rail) proposal discusses the Shannon line in the context of a Cork to Sligo rail corridor, but Mr Lynch says that low population numbers in Galway, Mayo and Sligo, militate against the reopening of the disused Galway-Sligo line.
However, Father Micheal MacGreil, secretary of the Western Inter-County Railway Committee, said infrastructure preceded development. "We are 22 years working for it. We have the support of every county council and every political party."
Mr Michael Kitt TD said there were enormous potential gains in moving freight off the roads onto a rail system. Mr Tim O'Malley, a member of Limerick County Council who is working on the LASER project, said his committee would liaise with the Connacht committee.
"It has been the policy of a lot of people in Government and in the upper echelons of certain State bodies not to support rail and there was a deliberate policy for years to downgrade the rail and public transport and put everything into roads. Now we have found that that has not helped," he said.