Foynes Line

Short answer: This is how politics works in Ireland today. If you want to change it, vote for someone else, or form your own party to change it.

Long answer: This is the usual urban/rural (or more often than not, Dublin vs everywhere else) divide in politics, and rural politicians both trying to show they can deliver projects in rural areas (or outside Dublin in general) - no matter how useless/wasteful, and also that they can hold up other projects, to show their constituents they have real power, no matter how damaging it is.

See attached AI breakdown of Dail debates on it. In summary, Local TD's for Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, Labour and the Green's were all in favour of it. Fine Gael were in government propped up by FF and the Greens at the time, so they weren't going to oppose it (publicly at least). Independents like Sean Canny supported it as they want to do the same thing for the WRC. No political party was going to oppose it, to keep their rural members happy. So you're left with an echo chamber saying this is needed, and skipping multiple steps along the way because they knew they could get it over the line regardless.

A possible solution here is to take the political power out of the Dail, and into the local governments, but that's a whole separate debate far beyond the Foynes line, or even infrastructure as a whole… The votes for directly elected mayor's shows the support that has, and the performance of Limerick's mayor doesn't instil much confidence in it either.

Another solution is updating the constitution to enforce all of the processes being followed through, and specific criteria being met before proceeding, but good luck getting the same rural TD's to agree with that, and getting the required referendum to even pass. Legislation achieving the same is not worth the paper its written on, as it can easily be changed.

We can go around in circles about why this was allowed to happen, and ultimately end up back at square one. Maybe that's worth having it's own thread to debate it?

The line has been funded, and is under construction. The best thing to look at is how it could be turned from a white elephant into something actually useful. That really leaves 3 options (in my opinion):

1. Implement an actual rail freight service
   1. Not worth it in my opinion - far too limited to be of any real benefit
2. Implement passenger services on the line
   1. Kickstart a Limerick commuter rail network
      1. Limited services are already being planned to Adare, and 2 other stations are planned for construction around Limerick.
      2. I posted my full thoughts on this in another thread
   2. Expand for regional services towards Tralee
      1. Not worth pursuing in my opinion
   3. Some other passenger services?
3. Abandon the line, and throw all of the money already spent down the drain
   1. I can agree the money should not have been spent in the first place, but given that it has been spent, this seems like a crazy option at this stage - we have the infrastructure, lets make use of it

this is most likely the reason - cheap, low-hanging-fruit project, which someone else is mostly paying for. They could have waited until they had a definite customer for it but the EU funding may not have still been there and Foynes port isn't going anywhere.

Its was not cheap low hanging fruit but ultra expensive higher up stuff that has a bitter taste. No eu funding. Ther is for the road but not the railway

If they wanted rid of it they would place a train bulk loading area on a spur off the line

Yer man running out of the site office at 1.34 was funny.