DUBLIN PORT Tunnel has been left out of a major, independent European tunnel safety assessment scheme – allegedly because of a missing e-mail between the National Roads Authority (NRA) and the European Tunnel Assessment Programme, Eurotap.
The NRA said it sent an e-mail application to Eurotap in March 2008 requesting the inclusion of the Dublin Port Tunnel in the programme, which measures compliance with a 2004 EU directive on tunnel safety.
The tunnel has been dogged by problems with its safety systems since its opening in December 2006. A safety report from Egis Tunnels was commissioned in 2007 by tunnel operator, Transroute, which identified significant deficiencies in the tunnel’s automatic control system.
This week, the NRA insisted it would not have been appropriate to have a “peer review” of the tunnel when it was already aware of difficulties, but maintained it had been seeking admission to the Eurotap programme, which has the potential to comment authoritatively on safety issues, for over a year.
However, chairman of Eurotap Robert Sauter told The Irish Timesthe organisation had "no knowledge of any communication" from the NRA.
He added that the programme for 2009 was now being formulated and he could not guarantee the inclusion of Irish tunnels in that assessment, even if the Irish authorities were to apply before the end of November, when the assessment programme will be finalised. The 2009 assessment is scheduled to be published in July 2010.
Eurotap is a voluntary scheme that was set up by motoring organisations across Europe to assess road tunnel safety after fatal fires in a number European road tunnels, most notably a fire in the Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy which killed 41 people in 1999.
The EU adopted a directive on tunnel safety in 2004 and the commission funded Eurotap to carry out a €4.5m safety audit of road tunnels within and around EU borders. The assessment programme subsequently became an annual event.
But while the NRA admitted as recently as last October that the Dublin Port Tunnel’s Scada safety system “is unsatisfactory in some respects”, NRA chairman Fred Barry insisted: “This is one of the first tunnels in Europe to be designed, built and operated under the latest EU safety directive. . . It is ahead of most tunnels in Europe.”
In addition to the Dublin Port Tunnel, Ireland’s road tunnels include the Jack Lynch tunnel in Cork and the proposed Shannon Tunnel in Limerick.
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