Debate contribution: North-west Transport

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 4 March 2025.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

4 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

North-west Transport

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4833566

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. That was a really thoughtful debate. It is not the first time that we have debated the north-west today, because it is an Opposition day devoted to the north-west, but it is not the first time that we have talked about cross-border infrastructure and rail, and I doubt that it will be the last, as the official Opposition. I will not go through and respond to all of the remarks, in part because Keith Buchanan did that very effectively and has saved me a job. There are a few points that I will summarise. I talked earlier about the fact that my mum was from the Maiden City of Derry. She will not forgive me for pointing out that she is old enough to have caught the train from Derry to Dublin from the old Foyle Road station. People who go to Derry sometimes wonder, particularly if you bring a child over the Craigavon Bridge, why there are two platforms: an upper deck and a lower deck. The reason is that one of them carried trains from Derry to Dublin. The truth is that the north-west and, indeed, the entire north-west of the island of Ireland — even if you define it as the south-west of Northern Ireland, it is the north-west of the island of Ireland — has been let down over the last century in terms of connectivity, be it on the roads, whether that is the A5 or the A6, or in rail connectivity. There is a historic opportunity now. We hope that it happens on a cross-party basis, and we, as the Opposition, will support and encourage Ministers from any party, including the current Minister, to make progress on this, because what we have done to connectivity to the north-west is one of the tragedies of the past century. Our motion addresses not just expanding the rail network and improving the service but tackling one of the major delays to the expansion of the A6: the appalling environmental crime at Mobuoy. We do want to see progress on that. It is somewhat disappointing that we haven't heard clarity from the Executive yet about when we will see practical action on Mobuoy. We are now more than a decade on from a former SDLP Environment Minister discovering that appalling crime and revealing it to the world, but we still do not have a clear plan to properly remediate it and deal with all the consequences, once of which is the delay to the completion of the A6. We want clarity on that. The A5 has been mentioned. That, too, is not just a critical part of improving connectivity but a vital part of saving lives on the entire north-west corridor of the island from Aughnacloy, Monaghan and Navan, if you like, all the way up to Derry and beyond, into Donegal. Too many lives have been lost. That connectivity is critical. We welcome the progress that has been made on the A5, but, as with others, we will ensure that there is more progress. My colleague Mark Durkan talked about the "Build it, and they will come" ethos in terms of rail connectivity. The increased services in the original phase of increasing the Derry to Belfast capacity proved that thesis. The hourly trains from Belfast to Dublin have proved that thesis. I will not play the blame game, but, in this part of the island and, in fact, in other parts of the island on the other side of the border, we destroyed the rail network. We destroyed connectivity. We dismembered connections between different parts not just of Northern Ireland but of the island of Ireland. That removed connections in a way that was profound and not just in an economic sense. It removed communities. Deborah talks passionately about Enniskillen: Enniskillen was a railway hub. It was not quite the St Louis of the north-west of Ireland, but it was connected to Bundoran, Clones, Monaghan, Portadown and all those places. What an ambition. The Minister will not be able to rebuild all that in her time in office, but what a great thing it would be historically for us all to be a part of rebuilding that network. We can start that now, in this mandate. I want to point out that, although we are consensus-building with this motion, we are still the Opposition. The Programme for Government that was brought out yesterday talks about the all-island strategic rail network. It says that the Executive will consider the findings of the all-island strategic rail review. If you look to the South’s Programme for Government, you will see that it says that they will work to implement the findings of the strategic rail review. There is a slight textual difference there, and I would like to see the two jurisdictions get on the same page. It needs to be funded, and I recognise that that is a challenge. Let us be ambitious, however, and set out a clear path for delivery. There are other bits of connectivity that we need to address. That includes — it would be remiss of me not to mention it, because I have a lot of relatives affected by it — the completion of work to upgrade the Buncrana Road and a lot of other things to do with the north-west transport plan, but it needs to be part of a broader picture that reconnects people in the north-west of the island of Ireland to Belfast, Dublin and the world of economic and cultural opportunities beyond. We will keep bringing the issue to the Assembly and pressing Ministers constructively to deliver for the people.

948 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:06 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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