Bring forward rail works: Durkan

Last week the Sentinel revealed the line will close for improvements for a year from April 2012 leaving the city without a rail link for the first months of City of Culture 2013.

The Department of Regional Development (DRD) said the planning process for the rail upgrade will take Londonderry's City of Culture status into consideration with night working a possibility to fast track the work.

Now Foyle MP Mark Durkan says the works should be brought forward if possible and that Rail Minister Conor Murphy must be supported in bringing this about.

"What Conor Murphy has now said is that the scheduled work will actually hit the beginning of the City of Culture year.

"He is saying that work will take a year starting in the spring of 2012 going into 2013. Of course the problem is - as we have seen in the past - some of these projects have taken longer. We can't even be assured that this project would be completed by spring 2013.

"That's why we have to urge the Minister, the Department and Translink to try to get a bit more urgency into this.

"We have waited a long time for this work, and therefore we must question why it cannot be brought forward. The work is needed – there is no argument about that – but let's do it at a time that suits and works for everyone.

"However, we simply can't have this work disrupting the City of Culture year.

"It is important we all now support the Minister in making sure that this project survives whatever squeeze there is on the capital spending budget, and then we have to give him every encouragement to get it completed more quickly.

"Indeed, we must give him every encouragement about revising that work and particularly asking the companies who would be competing for it whether or not they could do it in a quicker timeframe. I would imagine that most of them probably could.

This would help not just improving the line or ensuring that there was no disruption in our infrastructure in the key year of the City of Culture but would also expedite much needed construction work into our economy."