Donegal County Council to push for Letterkenny to Derry rail link restoration

Donegal County Council has agreed to help drive the idea of restoring rail between Letterkenny and Derry - a move welcomed by the Into The West campaigning group.

A motion to the council was proposed on Monday by Independent Councillor Declan Meehan, who represents the Milford electoral area. Local rail campaigners Into The West met with Cllr Meehan earlier this month to discuss the case for restoring rail between Letterkenny and Derry and to understand how best to secure the active support of Donegal Council for reopening the route.

Following the meeting, Cllr Meehan submitted a motion to Monday’s meeting of the full council, with two main asks included. The first was for Donegal Council to seek funding for a feasibility study into restoring the Letterkenny-Derry route – to coincide with a study that is already ongoing north of the border into reopening the Derry-Portadown line.

READ NEXT: N14 at Tullyrap to remain closed 'for the remainder of the week' after fatal crash

The second ask was for a delegation from Donegal to meet the new Irish Government to lobby for rail reopening to be accelerated in the county.

“We’re very grateful to Clr Meehan for meeting us earlier this month and for his enthusiasm for bringing rail back to Letterkenny,” Chair of Into The West, Steve Bradley, commented.

“The All-Island Rail Strategy has recommended that Letterkenny should have its rail restored, and a unique window of opportunity exists right now to do so. Firstly a dedicated €17bn infrastructure fund has been set up with the Apple Windfall Tax money, and the projects it will be spent on are due to be decided in the coming months.

“Secondly, the Northern & Western Region of Ireland – which includes Donegal – has an under-performing economy, which led the EU to officially downgrade its status in 2020 from a ‘developed’ region to one that is merely now ‘in transition’.

“This introduces the possibility of EU funding for rail projects in Donegal – funding which will no longer be available once the region’s economy is eventually upgraded again. So Cllr Meehan’s motion to Donegal County Council is extremely timely, and we’re very grateful for his support in proposing it”.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the closure of the Derry-Portadown railway line - which erased the last bits of rail from Tyrone and Donegal. Into the West is keen for that event to be marked in the coming months by a joint cross-border delegation to Dublin and Stormont from all four councils in the north-west of the island – Derry-Strabane, Donegal, Fermanagh-Omagh and Mid-Ulster.

The aim of the delegations will be to push for restoring the Derry-Portadown route to be made an agreed priority project within the All-Island Rail Strategy, and for the reopening of Letterkenny-Derry to be expedited and delivered within the next decade.
“The All-Island Rail Strategy recommended reopening the Derry-Portadown line to provide a rail corridor between the north-west and Dublin, but the route hasn’t been chosen as one of the strategy’s seven priority projects,” Mr Bradley added.

“It is essential that that decision is changed, as otherwise it just won’t happen for decades. Meanwhile, Letterkenny is currently the third largest town in the Republic without rail, and by 2035 it will be the largest. It is essential that the unique window of opportunity presented by the Apple Windfall Tax and EU funding – as well as the recently announced €1bn for the Shared Island Fund – be used to ensure that Letterkenny gets its rail back before 2035. Otherwise, it won’t happen until the second half of this century, which will be a massive failure.

“It’s fantastic that Donegal Council has agreed to be part of such a cross-border delegation, and we’re very grateful to Cllr Meehan and all councillors in the county for their support for the proposal. We hope that elected representatives in Derry-Strabane, Fermanagh-Omagh and Mid-Ulster will now also give their support to what would be an extremely powerful cross-border delegation on rail – one which would be impossible for the governments in Dublin and Belfast to ignore”.

Into the West campaign from improvements to the single rail line from Derry~Londonderry to Belfast, to campaigning for the return of rail to counties Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone, to link up the towns such as Strabane, Omagh and Enniskillen that lost their rail lines in the 1950s and 1960s and restore rail as an option for journeys from Derry~Londonderry and Letterkenny to Dublin, Sligo and Galway.