McNulty demands parity for Newry rail services | Latest Newry News, Newry Sport and Newry Business for Newry City

McNulty demands parity for Newry rail services

SDLP Assembly Member for Newry and Armagh Justin McNulty MLA has demanded that Newry be given the type of rail services which towns such as Portadown and Bangor have.

Newry-Train-Station21McNulty raised this issue during the Final Stage of the Budget in the Assembly this week.

Speaking after the debate he said, “Thousands of people from Newry and the wider South Armagh and South Down region get in their car every morning and travel to Belfast and Dublin because there is inadequate rail provision.

“Many of these people have been telling me that they would much prefer to use the train for their commute to work. Over the past number of years, under two successive Regional Development Ministers from Newry and Armagh, we have seen rail services between Belfast and Dublin via Newry become less frequent and more expensive.

“This is a dreadful legacy from their time in office,” he insisted. “There is no direct service, without having to change train, from Newry to Belfast in the mornings. There are 46 trains from Portadown to Belfast every day and only 10 from Newry. The last train for Portadown leaves Belfast at 11.00 pm; the last train for Newry leaves at 8.00 pm.

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July 2016“Earlier this year I met with the then Regional Development Minister Michelle McIlveen to discuss the disparity in services for Newry and already in this mandate I have asked the Minister for Infrastructure Chris Hazzard what he intends to do to address that inequality in rail provision, and I repeated that call today.

He added, “I will continue the fight until I see fair play the rail users from this area.”

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Posted by on Jul 4 2016. Filed under Community, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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