OPINION: Tracking the flaws – correcting past reports on the Western Rail Corridor

Governments reach out to private consultancy firms to seek advice and guidance in situations where the civil service or state agencies lack specific expertise. An economic justification can be made for this kind of ‘outsourcing’, when highly technical and specific expertise is required in such areas as medicine, engineering, international trade and so on.
But outsourcing can become addictive.
If a government wants to delay taking action, or does not want to take action, an easy solution is to farm out the problem to a consultant and ensure that interactions between government and consultant can remain concealed from prying Freedom of Information inquiries. Government can then claim that unpopular findings were arrived at impartially.
Since 2020, I have engaged in two situations where the Department of Transport commissioned rail reports from consultancy firms. The first was EY, whose error-riddled report in 2020 concluded that there was no justification for restoring the disused Western Rail Corridor (WRC) between Galway/Athenry and Claremorris.
The second was the Arup report of late 2023 that concluded there was little or no role for rail in regional development in the North and West (N&W) region and completely ignored the existence of the currently disused WRC line linking Claremorris to Collooney/Sligo. Was this deliberate or just sheer ignorance?
There was, however, a grudging admission that the Athenry-Claremorris line might have some use for freight, since firms in Mayo have been clamouring for better access to rail freight in order to reduce their carbon footprint.
The cost of these two reports? About €1.6 million. The value to the Irish tax-payer? Negative, in my judgement.

FLAWED REPORTS
THE findings of the deeply flawed EY report have already been overridden by government, with plans afoot to reopen the Galway/Athenry to Claremorris link, while the ‘disappeared’ rail link from Claremorris to Collooney/Sligo will surely be ‘rediscovered’ and reopened later this decade as Ireland’s climate change obligations press ever more tightly on government and the slow pace of policy progress to achieve them is exposed.
Policymakers and the wider public have not been well served by these consultants’ reports. However, combatting and overturning such reports is a difficult business. Government steering committees appear either unable or unwilling to call the consultants to account during their work. The consultants, whose cards are marked by their government client, inevitably lack any incentives to be searching or critical in their findings. Both sides anticipate that badly written reports, full of PR puff, errors and technical gobbledygook, may annoy people, but after squawking in protest, these people will give up and go away.
Over the past four years, I have learned how official negligence and lack of interest in regional rebalancing can be tackled. Of course, one needs to protest against flawed consultancy reports and government indifference. But to be effective, one must re-do the job that the consultants failed to do, but do it properly.
For example, the All Island Strategic Rail Review produced by Arup for the Department of Transport was so badly drafted that it required months to deconstruct and understand. It seemed designed to beguile and confuse rather than to instruct and explain, a long-term ‘strategy’ with no real strategic thinking behind it. It displayed a worrying level of ignorance about the dynamic performance of the Irish economy in recent decades, while its treatment of the four major regions on the island (North and West, East and Midlands, South and Northern Ireland) was cursory and shallow.

THOROUGH INVESTIGATION
IN THE newly published West on Track report, ‘The Atlantic Railway Corridor – The Mayo-Sligo Rail Link’, it has taken over 200 pages to try to set right the poor analysis of Arup, with a new analysis mainly focused on the N&W region.
This required a thorough investigation into the nature of the ‘lagging’ performance of our region and the contributory role played by inadequate transport infrastructure. It required explaining the origins of the WRC in the late 19th century; the dramatic growth of the recently restored southern section of the railway linking Limerick to Galway; and a virtual tour of the ‘disappeared’ Claremorris-Collooney/Sligo line, revealing the remarkably good state of its preservation.
It was also necessary to go ‘granular’ and look at the costs of restoring the Sligo end of the WRC and to present estimated travel times on a restored line. A journey time from Claremorris to Sligo of 70 minutes was found to be achievable. That would give a journey time of approximately 2 hours 10 minutes from Sligo to Galway. Such a journey, in comfort and with the ability to work on the move, would certainly be a major attraction. The total cost of reopening of the line was estimated at €412 million – significantly less than the cost of a single kilometre of the proposed Dublin Metro.
The likely financial, business and climate benefits of restoring the line were examined, and since the time horizon stretched out to 2050 and beyond, the non-fossil fuel options – such as electric and hydrogen – were also considered.
The report will be available on www.westontrack.com from this week.
By the way, the total cost to the State of this alternative report was… nil.

John Bradley is a former ESRI professor and has published on the island economy of Ireland, EU development policy, industrial strategy and economic modelling.