All aboard for the Ross lair express

So here we go again.  The old leaked report that the Minister is studying on his desk. Once more Minister Shane Ross is said to be studying a report to include for closure the Gorey Rosslare railway.  It’s hard not to be cynical about Irish Rail, its management and its practices.  Minister Shane Ross cut his political teeth on his scepticism about Irish Rail corporate governance and protection of assets.  Surely as he studies the document he’ll recall Irish Rail’s past failings and he’ll call management to book.

And account they should.  Irish Rail still operates a management based on notional districts rather than around the services they actually deliver. Irish Rail has capitulated in the freight division to road freight.  This despite the EU directive that by 2030 30% of all freight to travel over 300 Km must go by either rail or shipping.  Roll on Brexit and our need to diversify our markets beyond the UK and how are we doing so far? Well we’ve less than 0.5% so far. Irish Rail freight has just 4 customers. How can you run a business based on that? The proposal to end passenger services to Rosslare tells you all you need to know about their sense of vision post Brexit. The fundamental economics of the rail industry is that it moves freight very efficiently large distances. On top of that passenger services are the extra, not the core business.

Doubtless we’ll hear about the number of passengers on social welfare passes and the failure of the government to pay enough. Irish Rail has a point on this one, but it’s wider than social welfare passengers.  The network was cut to the bone in 60’s and that was supposed to be that. Instead there are real fears that what will be left is Dublin/Cork and Limerick with commuter services and little else. 

The failure of the operator to maintain infrastructure means that speeds on the line are dropping which means that journey times are longer when compared to motorways.

And there’s no place like home either to tell you how Irish Rail play hard and fast with figures to get the decision they need when it suits them.  About 7 years ago Irish Rail pointed up annual losses of over €2M on the Rosslare Waterford line as grounds to suspend passenger services on that route.  Key to the business plan for closure was the cost of manning 24 hours the Barrow Bridge. The signal box on the bridge controls the swing engine on the bridge allowing access to New Ross up the Barrow. The NTA allowed the company to reduce costs by scheduling the shifts on that signal box with the pilot’s hours at New Ross Harbour as part of the plan to suspend services.  Incredibly the bridge remained manned in the last 7 years by Irish Rail.

Irish Rail has failed to promote international passenger services through Rosslare Europort. You cannot buy a Sail Rail ticket from the Irish Rail website.  So is it any wonder people are flying with budget airlines when the rail operator does not compete?

The advantage of a rail network is that you can take a passenger from station to station for the same price all year round.  I don’t live close to an airport. Most airline passengers either have an inward journey to their departing airport and an outward journey when they land. Dublin Airport’s passenger numbers will this year exceed 25M. The nearest railway is about 4 miles away over open flat farmland.  Where is the vision to connect up the rail system to Dublin Airport so as to tap into that market?

And to finish off, let’s not forget that the report is based on data collected in November 2015 on the day before Storm Abigail when people were warned not to make unnecessary journeys. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so serious. However at least Minister Ross has a track record on seeing through the waffle when it comes to Irish Rail. He has a track record in business. Irish Rail is a business and needs to be run business-like.  It’ll be interesting to see his response and how he’ll deal with the issue.  It’s one thing to be a prisoner of officials, it’s another thing to have a belief.

A snake in the grass

There’s an old saying that some politicians can hear the grass grow.  Perhaps that might be a slight exaggeration. However, when it comes to Japanese Knotweed they mightn’t be too far wide of the mark. While it’s not widespread, when it comes to reproducing, it has the potential to do a lot of harm.

And there’s a more than a bit of it about. I’ve come across it on the Rosslare Rd where it has been sprayed to oblivion by the council. But it’s on a bank of land to the rear of a terrace on Distillery Rd where it has come across to the grounds of the CBS. I saw it in Barntown this week where it is close to the weighbridge.  There’s more in Killinick. Further afield as you drive into Enniscorthy, you’ll find it on the side of the road on the left hand side.  Indeed the council has put warning notices up to tell the public not to pick or cut the weed.

Why? Because it is extremely resilient and will not only survive but thrive. As the name suggests it’s not native to Ireland. It’s an escapee from domestic gardens.  It spreads underground and uses stems called rhizomes to pop up to develop a stem. The stem can even drive through tarmac. Nothing is safe from this stuff when it gets going.

Japanese Knotweed on your property can have implications for your home insurance in the event of a claim for structural damage.  You’ll pick it out at this time of year with its small white flowers. For some reason the plants in Ireland are all female and there are no male plants. If males were found here then the numbers would be significantly higher as the plant could reproduce in 2 different ways.

The weed is invasive, that means it is foreign and rapidly growing and damaging native plants and habitats.  The only way to wipe it out is by spraying in August and September.  It sounds simple but here’s the rub.

The council will give information on its website but after that it’s a matter for the property owner. If the property owner is the council then they’ll spray to protect their property however if the weed is part of a population that spreads over onto private land then the council won’t spray anywhere other than the land they own.

In time the weed will return to invade the council land so the cycle of spraying will start all over again. This week the media carried reports of Pacific Salmon being found in Ireland’s rivers. Presumably it’s swimming up the Slaney and may in time colonise the tributaries and breed there.

My point is this, if we’re not prepared to root out invasive species when they first arrive, how can we do it when they’re well settled here?

It’s time for the Department of Heritage to take the lead to protect habitats and to survey where the weed is found and then put in place a spraying program to wipe it out in conjunction with property owners.

Anything else is a waste of money.  If heritage week is to mean anything then it’s long past the time to eradicate this pest.  Let us not allow the grass to grow under our feet on this one.

The road to somewhere!

Right now in Wexford a lot of cars aren’t moving. If you listen each afternoon to the traffic report from AA Roadwatch you’ll hear the bottle neck on the N25 between the Whitford and New Ross Roundabouts regularly name checked.  

The first time I noticed it was the day of the Killag show when I saw a tail back. However it is fair to say that it has been a feature for most of the Summer.  So what is the cause of the present tailback and what is the solution? Firstly it is holiday time when the population of Wexford swells to put pressure on infrastructure.  It doesn’t help that elsewhere there is road works around town although it is unrelated to the gridlock I’ve noticed on the N25. 

Crossing Wexford Bridge has become a chore so much that as a regular walker I’m beginning to notice that if I walk fast from Ely to the Quays I’ll be quicker than many motorists stuck in their cars.

But is it the case that moving the arrival time of Stena from Fishguard into Rosslare for 16.30 is adding to the problem? Quite likely!  Summer sees ferries at full capacity with cars. It used to be the case, especially when we had a Borough Council that Wexford saw itself as a town hoping to attract in visitors that use the ferry. Sure, passengers want to get on the road after waiting around onboard and they have destinations to get to. But after driving 12 miles from Rosslare Harbour, at present they’re going nowhere along the N25 by pass.  The focus of the new borough and district council seems to be blurred when it comes to where a previous council saw an opportunity to do business.

There is a simple and relatively cheap solution to the problem at the New Ross Road roundabout. Traffic tails back to the Whitford Roundabout because the New Ross roundabout is inefficient and overloaded with traffic from town trying to get onto the N25 or the N11.

Traffic turning left from the bypass that is going from Rosslare must concede to traffic already on the roundabout which entered from the Newtown Road. The solution is to compulsory purchase land on the west side of the road opposite the Maldron Hotel and put a slip road about 100-200 M long directly from the N25 to join the main road about 50 M up from the roundabout on the Barntown side. Imaginative marking of the road with lanes will separate traffic before it arrives at the roundabout. This is what work on the M50 at the junction I often use to access the airport from the Ballymun-Naul road.  

This will separate N25 traffic from N11 bound traffic exiting Newtown Road. Of course we’ll hear that the solution has to wait till whenever the N11 motorway is complete and a PPP is signed. With a bit of luck we might also hear that some restaurants might have a happy hour to bring in some business, Kellys at Drinagh actually shuts each evening as the gridlock builds up within a stone’s throw. The problem may diminish as Summer ends but expect it to return again next year.

In the meantime, Enjoy what’s left of your holidays whether or not you get stuck in a traffic jam!  

Reeling in the years!

So there I was last week watching “Reeling in the years”. Reflecting on how Ireland used to be. Out of the corner of my eye I could see day glow vests of people fanning out around the doors in my estate. I wondered who they were. It didn’t take long to find out as within a minute the doorbell rang. I opened it to see a man and a woman on my doorstep dressed in day glow vests on a bright summer’s evening. “Good evening”, they said “We’re here from the pro life movement to talk to you about the 8^th Amendment”. The years were well and truly reeled in as I remembered back to 1983.

So my opening line to my visitors was that I believed the people had made a mistake in 1983 and that it was time for the 8^th amendment to be repealed.  When they asked me why I explained that it was the original intention of the 8^th Amendment to interfere with medicine and stop contraceptives like the IUD and test tube techniques for treating infertility. I pointed out that in 1983 Ireland’s population was smaller than it is now however the numbers of women accessing termination in the UK had dropped in real terms by 25% since 1983 pointing out that it was education and not legislation that really worked.

Why I opposed the 1983 amendment back in the day was because that it was not proposed to introduce abortion back then. Rather it was a defensive move because pro life supporters felt that the 1861 Act which outlawed abortion would be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The net effect of the amendment was to freeze the law and medical practice. It is heartless to oblige a woman who is pregnant with a foetus diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality to continue that pregnancy against her own wishes. It is wrong to oblige a women who is seriously ill to continue a pregnancy or as we had a few years ago, a woman kept on life support simply because she was pregnant. Doctors with their patients or next of kin are entitled to take decisions in the interest of the patient. As medical technology advances more of these situations will arise into the future. The 1983 amendment was designed to freeze for ever more what a doctor can or can’t do for his patient. It was also a cynical political stick which Charlie Haughey used to batter Garett Fitzgerald over the head with.  My recollection of the count day was Ray Burke TD sitting god like reading out tallies in a referendum that his party was officially neutral.

I pointed out to the 2 man and woman on the doorstep that I feared the referendum would be nasty and abusive and personalised.  The lady told me that she had a friend who had an abortion after 6 months and that she was affected by it.  I’ve no reason to think that’s not the case. However nobody is proposing a time limit of 6 months in Ireland. We cannot influence what other countries abortion laws are.

One of my visitors looked to the other and eventually told me that people won’t kill their own child but will ask someone else to do it.  He asked me if I had any children, I told him I’ve 5 and none of them would ask someone to kill children either. That part of the exchange speaks volumes about the ignorance that will be hawked from doorstep to doorstep around this town.  We haven’t seen the proposed wording which the constitutional citizen’s assembly asked for yet and already a group is on the march asking that we oppose something that has not been proposed.

If the exchange on my doorstep taught me anything it is that little has changed in the last 35 years on this topic. The same people that opposed divorce, marriage equality, access to contraception and gay rights are now back to the future to where it all started in 1983.

Next year we’re promised a referendum. Let’s wait and see the wording but there’s a strong chance I’ll be knocking doors again. Maybe at the end of the decade the referendum might feature in Reeling in the Years?

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland

If one of the pretenders to 10 Downing St turned up in Wexford, you’d expect that it would be newsworthy, wouldn’t you? You’d think that it would be up there in our media if not page 1 nationally well at least mentioned in dispatches?

In politics, they say timing is everything so perhaps it’s not silly enough for the silly season, but last week we had a visit from Stephen Crabb MP, one time challenger to Theresa May and former UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Last week he traveled to Rosslare Europort to meet with newly appointed Minister for State Michael D’arcy to discuss the future for West Wales and the South East Ireland post Brexit. Mr Crabb is MP for Pembrokeshire which contains Fishguard and Milford Haven, 2 hugely important ports with considerable links to Ireland.  As Britain lurches from shambles to catastrophe over their departure from the EU there is growing concern in West Wales at how trade and jobs will be impacted once Britain leaves in 18 months time.

One might have thought Mr Crabb would have understood better than most the need for timing in politics. You see Mr Crabb is one of the foremost campaigners for Brexit and one might have expected that he would have come here to see the possible impact before he threw his weight behind Farage, Gove and Johnson. Presumably it was his desire to get into No 10 that prioritised his personal ambition over that of his constituents.  Now in the wake of Tory infighting it’s very much a case of every man for himself and he has to be seen as fighting for his local interests.  The reality is that another election in the UK could see the Tories beaten out the door.

And that’s why he set sail from Fishguard last week, following in the grand maritime tradition of Cook, Nelson and Drake. Exploring foreign lands beyond the Tuskar Triangle to see what trinkets he could bring home to astonish the natives. His foreign frolics feature in the Welsh media this week. The concern in Fishguard and Pembroke is that a return of a hard border will see less Irish trucks using the land bridge to Europe given the departure of Britain from the customs union.  The increase in inflation, the strength of the pound and drop in growth forecast for the UK economy into 2018 suggest that personal taxes will increase leaving less to spend. That will mean a reduction in exports to the UK from Ireland but add to that the likely levies applied to Irish goods in Britain and vice versa it makes for grim times ahead both here and across the water.

For all his new found concern in his local economy, Crabb cares little about Wexford and the Irish economy nor for the wider social and economic consequences of Brexit.  Brexit simply sounded good at the time and as a concept explains perfectly how Tory men use narrow nationalism as a vehicle advancement.

During the week I went to see the movie Dunkirk.  Dunkirk was a national humiliation for Britain that fixed Britain’s resolve to undo the disaster of Dunkirk and to ensure the UK could have a role in Europe. In 1940 Britain didn’t know where and didn’t know when but it still knew it had a role to play.

I once had an Uncle, long deceased, who was rescued after 4 days from Dunkirk.  Uncle Monty returned home after World War 2 and stood for the Labour Party in a local election in his home town. Monty eventually became Mayor. As a teenager I remember once being in his home and reading his election literature. What struck me about his leaflet was how he said he’d lived all his life in the town except between 1939 and 1945 when he served his country. He didn’t have to add anything else. That generation understood a sense of wider communal duty to put your community ahead of yourself and serve because someday things can be better. Many in the present generation of UK politicians and indeed in Ireland espouse the exact opposite.

Which brings me back to Mr Crabb. Once firmly en route home to Wales, Minister D’arcy tweeted to him, a tweet which Mr Crabb in turn retweeted.  At some stage Minister D’arcy appears to have had second thoughts about his away day with the Welshman and he deleted his tweet.  

It was that sort of day in Rosslare.