Public-private partnerships are likely to be the mechanism for lots of infrastructural projects in the years ahead, and one man who intends to take advantage of the opportunities presented by PPPs is Ray Byrne, CIE's group head of programmes and projects.
Byrne is taking his leave of CIE to set up a consultancy which will offer transport and project development advice and expertise to both public and private sector clients. He will, however, continue advising CIE for a while on the transport's group capital projects.
Ray Byrne - who joined CIE five years ago from the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications - has established a reputation in the company for unleashing the development potential of the transport group's vast and underutilised property portfolio.
He is understood to have played a key role in developing CIE's joint venture with Treasury Holdings for the planned national conference centre in CIE's railway marshalling yards on the North Wall.
He also was responsible for putting together the deal with Esat Telecom which sees Esat's fibre optic cables being laid along the main railway lines linking the major urban centres.
