Oireachtas

Tallaght section of Luas first to be completed in 2002, O'Rourke says

The Tallaght to Abbey Street and Abbey Street to Connolly Station sections will be the first of the Dublin Light Rail system …

By MICHAEL O'REGAN and MICHAEL FOLEY
Wed May 13 1998 - 01:00

The Tallaght to Abbey Street and Abbey Street to Connolly Station sections will be the first of the Dublin Light Rail system to be completed. The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, announced they would be completed by the winter of 2002. She told the Dail yesterday that the Sandyford to St Stephen's Green section would be completed by the summer of 2003.

The targets for St Stephen's Green to Broadstone, Ballymun and the airport envisages the completion of CIE's public consultation on the surface section of the Broadstone-Ballymun to the airport by autumn 1998, the consultation studies on the underground section on St Stephen's Green to Broadstone by autumn to winter 1998 and the bore-hole drilling on underground section to start in the spring to autumn of 1999.

Ms O'Rourke announced the preliminary timetable when responding to a Fine Gael motion condemning the Government's failure to go ahead with proposals which would have secured the EU £114 million fund. Fine Gael accepted a Labour Party amendment proposing that the EU funding be redirected for use on other transport projects in Dublin.

Fine Gael's spokesman on Public Enterprise, Mr Ivan Yates, said it was "incomprehensible" that the Government had shelved the report on Luas. The Government decision was the worst taken by this Government, he said. Gridlock was the biggest issue facing Dubliners. The rush hour used to run from 8.15 a.m. to 9.15 a.m. It now ran from 7.15 a.m. to 10 a.m.

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The Government tried to stretch credibility on this issue too far. The Minister first of all created a deception through the Atkins report. She emphasised repeatedly that a further independent group of expert was needed before signing off on Luas.

She assured us that European funding would not be lost. In reality she had secretly abandoned the Luas project. When the Atkins report recommended the best option was the existing proposal, she and her Government colleagues clutched at soundbites in the report to draw a different conclusion, he said.

"The Government then hurriedly and in a confused and hasty way drew their own brand new Dublin transport blueprint. They then obtained various vested interests to spin this stunt into a visionary project as a panacea to Dublin's traffic woes. Now that mirage has collapsed, the reality is that we have awakened not into to a vision but a nightmare. We have ended up with a project for which there has been no technical appraisal, let alone a design or specification. We have ended up with a project that has no phasing, no start date, no completion date. We have ended up with a project that is uncosted and for which the full cost will probably exceed £1 billion," he said.

Ms O'Rourke said the underground section in the city centre was designed to address two issues raised by the Atkins report, disruption during construction and potential longer-term capacity constraints in the central area as the network was extended.

The Atkins report identified the potential for capacity problems as the network expanded. The Government took a longer view and noted that the Atkins view was that the underground option offered the ability for higher passenger capacity and operational efficiencies applied to a greater extent as the network was expanded.

The Government decided to address the capacity problem by building a tunnel on the city centre section. "This is a much more sensible approach than attempting an increasingly complex patchwork of solutions along the way as traffic grows." She would be working to ensure that a reasonable proportion of the funds that had been earmarked for Luas would be used to address public transport requirements.

The new light rail project would be submitted for EU assistance under the next round of structural and cohesion funding. The "revitalised" project addressed a number of the Commission's particular areas of interest, especially in serving Ballymun and Dublin Airport.

Fine Gael's spokeswoman on Dublin traffic, Ms Olivia Mitchell, accused Ms O'Rourke of trading the reality of a planned and immediately implementable system for a fairy tale.

The Labour Party spokesman on Public Enterprise, Mr Emmet Stagg, said the Government had jettisoned a comprehensive on-street proposal for a wish list of aspirations which had no budget, no timetable and no basis in reality. "Let there be no doubt about it that the on-street light rail proposal was as extensive as that proposed by the Minister. The difference was that the Luas proposal was costed and had a timetable for implementation." It was necessary to ringfence the £114 million of EU structural funding and that it be spent on implementing other aspects of the Dublin Transport Initiative proposals for Dublin.