New NI Government, implications for rail?
 

First of all, I want to say a big CONGRATULATIONS :D to the people and politicians of Northern Ireland for *finally* working out a power sharing govenrment. Hopefully this deal will stick.

I wonder if the new Northern Ireland government, and the financial package it seems to have got, will have any impact on rail services up there including the Enterprise.

I know for example that Ian Paisely pushed for certain monetary incentives from the UK (and Irish?) governments, like Water Tax relief and so on, before agreeing to power sharing.

I wonder how, if at all, rail factors in to recent events.

History shows that the first assembly didn't do much for reasons we all know, its only lasting legacy in fact was the C3K trains, it was the one big noticeable thing Stormont made a decision on.

Outlook is positive

I personally would love to see a direct Derry to Dublin cross border line built via Omagh, Monaghan and Navan but thats a comelete pipe dream.

I'm not expecting any great changes. Having a local administration will make it harder for Translink to close Befast-Derry, if they wanted to. Maybe we might see that line upgraded into a proper Intercity service instead of a glorified branch line. I know a lot of people would like to see the resurrection of the Portadown-Armagh, Lisburn-Banbridge and the Derry Road, but there are more than enough problems on the existing network to sort out before we could even think of any of those ideas.

Unless cross-border money goes into it to extend the line to Letterkenny...