The Labour Party said this afternoon the "litany of cock-ups" connected with the LUAS project have been farcical and called on the Minister for Transport to consider "standing down" the Rail Procurement Agency (RPA).
Labour's transport spokeswoman, Ms Roisin Shortall, questioned whether Mr Brennan had "lost a grip on reality" following his comments last night admitting aspects of the LUAS Dublin light railway network were a serious mistake and are now a "mess".
Speaking on RTÉ's Prime Timelast night, the Minister said if he had the chance to begin again on the railway - which is millions of euro over budget and a year behind schedule - he would build it underground.
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"If we were starting with a clean sheet of paper, knowing today's figures, you would probably opt for a complete city-wide metro, and you would probably do 100 per cent of it underground," he told the programme.
In response to the Minister's comments, Ms Shorthall said the "litany of cock-ups leads to many serious questions".
She asked why the RPA was given the project "when it clearly lacked sufficient technical expertise" and why it was allowed "spend enormous sums on outside consultants when they should have had this capability in the first place?"
She also asked the Minister to explain how the Government could give the RPA responsibility for any future metro project or for the integrated transport ticketing system "when their record on LUAS is so dire?"
"The Minister for Transport is equally culpable," she said. "Throughout this farce he has defended the RPA and failed to admit that there was a problem. If he is prepared to admit publicly that the project is a mess then he must also seriously consider standing down the RPA in order to avoid such serious mistakes in the future."
As part of a major review of the National Development Plan, an initial report on the Luas project is due to be published tomorrow.
The mid-term review will repeat the conclusions of previous studies, which found that the project was running at more than twice the original cost estimates.
