Recent changes in Government have seen the exit of Green Party ministers, the most significant of whom was the party’s leader Eamon Ryan, who served as Minister for Transport along with other responsibilities.

He initiated a review of Ireland’s railways, conducted by the engineering consultants Arup. Their report released last year recommended a huge expansion of the mainline rail system north and south.

Total capital cost was estimated at around €50 billion, of which the Republic would incur around €37 billion. This does not include the operating losses for which no estimate was offered.

Ireland’s rail system contracted sharply in the 1950s and 1960s as loss-making lines were closed on both sides of the border.

Even on the reduced networks which remain, the annual revenues from passenger and freight services fall well short of operating costs – the two rail companies require large current subsidies as well as State capital for any investment projects which are contemplated.

Viability crisis

In the last 40 years, the number of road vehicles in the Republic has more than trebled, intensifying the viability crisis for the railways which had already led to the closure in the 1950s and 1960s of lines deemed likely to rack up indefinite losses.

The proposal from Arup is the latest in a series of reports from consultants engaged by the project promoters, in this case a unit of the minister’s department called the National Transport Authority, which tend to produce recommendations congenial to the agencies which commission them.

These agencies are usually State companies or quangos, sometimes lobby groups with an eye on expanding their commercial opportunities.

In an article in The Irish Times on 14 December last, the former Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan drew attention specifically to the Arup report on railways.

He urged civil servants to re-visit the proposals, not least because Arup themselves appeared to be offering estimates of the balance of costs and benefits too low to pass muster.

Cost-benefit analysis

The application of the cost-benefit framework to big capital projects around the world has been studied intensively and the principal conclusion is that project promoters systematically understate costs and exaggerate benefits.

The result is that foolish projects get off the ground, yielding big cost overshoots and disappointing outcomes.

Ireland has become a notably car-dependent country in recent decades. The Central Statistics Office has estimated that in rural Ireland, outside towns with a population of 1,500 or more, only 5% of households do not own a car.

More than 60% of these rural households have two or more vehicles. This creates, outside the urban areas, a distinctly hostile environment for public transport, even for buses.

CIE’s report for 2023 reveals that customer receipts from rail freight amounted to only €4.6m, roughly the annual revenue of a medium-sized supermarket

It is Government policy to replace petrol and diesel cars with electric vehicles, so there is no point appealing to decarbonisation arguments for reviving passenger rail.

Trucks are harder to electrify but rail freight has almost disappeared in Ireland, now carrying just 1% of total volumes as acknowledged by Arup and incapable of revival even if it was worth the effort.

CIE’s report for 2023 reveals that customer receipts from rail freight amounted to only €4.6m, roughly the annual revenue of a medium-sized supermarket of which there are hundreds in the bigger cities and dozens even in smaller counties.

Roll-on, roll-off freight will never switch to rail given the short distances most of it needs to travel and the convenience of the Port Tunnel, while lo-lo (lift-on lift-off) cannot readily be transferred to rail at Dublin, the busiest port, and has been rejected as infeasible by the management there.

There is something almost heroic about the Arup vision of reopening rural railways in the north midlands, or the line from Waterford to Rosslare. It was closed, due to embarrassingly low patronage, as recently as 2010.

Irish Rail owns Rosslare (all the other main ports are conventional semi-State commercial companies) and the rail review seems to place an undue weight on its potential for attracting rail freight.

Arup write that ‘Rosslare Europort is growing following changes to trading arrangements between Ireland, the UK, and the European Union.’

There appears to be a belief that Rosslare is somehow very close to France but Cornwall gets in the way.

Sailing times from Cork are about the same, from Dublin a few hours longer but hardly enough to justify big investment in rail lines to Rosslare to attract rail freight.

Patrick Honohan’s conclusion was that civil servants should cross-check the calculations for optimism bias in line with the Public Spending Code, which sought to assign this role to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

However the code appears to have been abandoned with the new emphasis on ‘delivery’.

It should be restored – nobody should get to mark their own homework.