During a debate in the Senedd recently the Economic Development Minister, Ieuan Wyn Jones, confirmed that he has not ruled out improving railway services to Fishguard as has been claimed by some local elected members recently. He confirmed that he had rejected the initial recommendation in the committee’s report because he was unhappy that the Enterprise and Learning committee wished him to place one of the recommendations of the south–west Wales integrated transport consortium above some of the others. What he will be doing is looking at all the recommendations for the south west Wales area in their entirety alongside the schemes for every region across Wales and then making a decision. As a committee we heard evidence about the need to improve train services to Fishguard and we have also seen local campaigns and a petition being submitted to the Assembly calling for these improvements. If we want to see more people using our railways then we need to ensure that the appropriate services are available in the first place and there is no doubt that we do need to see an improvement.

I fully support the calls to expand and improve the services to Fishguard and I will of course be meeting with the Minister in the near future to discuss and remind him of some of the problems facing our railway services in west Wales.