The purpose of the meeting today is to discuss the projects for which the National Transport Authority is responsible, within the national development plan review 2025, under the sectoral investment plan. I am pleased to welcome from the National Transport Authority Ms Anne Shaw, chief executive, who is very new to the post, in place only a matter of weeks. I wish her well in all our interest and her own interest for the period ahead. I also welcome Mr. Hugh Creegan, deputy chief executive, who was with us last June.

Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise nor make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if a witness’s statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, he or she will be directed to discontinue his or her remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction. I remind members that they will be allocated a six-minute speaking slot for questions and answers, with a second chance to contribute at the end, if they so wish. We had originally hoped for this meeting to look at the MetroLink project but we have postponed that discussion because the senior executive in that regard is not available today. We are dealing with the National Transport Authority in relation-----

The metro is postponed again.

Yes, even at this meeting. I understand, however, that the senior executive was somewhere in Europe for work on the metro in the past two days. It was directly connected. He cannot be in two places at the one time. That is fair enough.

We will focus on the national development plan's sectoral investment plan for transport, which outlines the pathway for future investment in Ireland’s transport system up to 2030. The NTA is here to discuss projects it is responsible for, such as BusConnects, the Cork area commuter rail, DART+, Luas Finglas and the western rail corridor. I invite Ms Shaw to make her opening statement on behalf of the National Transport Authority.

As the incoming chief executive at the National Transport Authority - it has been only three and a half weeks - I thank committee members for the invitation to appear before them today. I look forward to the session. I understand that the committee wishes to discuss the projects the NTA is responsible for within the Department of Transport sectoral investment plan for transport. To assist me in dealing with this and any questions members may have, I am joined by Mr. Creegan, deputy chief executive, as members are aware.

The sectoral investment plan for transport was published by the Department of Transport on 26 November. It commits €22.3 billion to the portfolio of transport projects within the Department of Transport’s remit between 2026 and 2030, with an additional €2 billion from the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund assigned to support the development of MetroLink. Within that overall commitment, €10.1 billion has been apportioned to public transport over the five-year period of the plan, in addition to the €2 billion from the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund for MetroLink. However, as the €10.1 billion has to finance aspects of the public transport capital programme which are retained by the Department of Transport, such as asset management, funding to Irish Rail and the purchase of the Enterprise replacement fleet, the exact funding distribution to the NTA under the sectoral investment plan has not yet been finalised and informed to us. When that distribution is issued, we will be able to set out a more detailed investment plan covering public transport projects within the responsibility of the NTA.

As the committee will be aware, the NTA acts as the approving authority for most public transport projects, with a small number of rail projects outside the greater Dublin area falling outside of our statutory remit. In relation to the mega projects, we act as the day-to-day approving authority for MetroLink, BusConnects and the DART+ programmes, which the Cathaoirleach referenced. With regard to those projects, the sectoral investment plan sets out broad details of their intended progression over the period to 2030. MetroLink is identified as commencing construction in 2027, with construction procurement occurring during 2026 and 2027, subject to the resolution or conclusion of a current set of judicial review proceedings which have been well publicised and are seeking to quash An Coimisiún Pleanála's approval of the MetroLink scheme.

In relation to the DART+ programme and associated projects, the plan envisages the construction of the new Spencer Dock station and the new DART+ depot, electrification of DART+ West, extension of the DART to Wicklow town, improvements on the Bray to Greystones section of the line and continued progression of the wider programme through land acquisition on foot of railway orders received. A new DART+ fleet will enter into service on the network in 2027, starting with the northern line, while there is also potential to commence works on other elements of DART+ Coastal North, including supporting infrastructure such as track passing loops and a new platform at Drogheda station, prior to 2030.

On BusConnects, construction will commence on new bus corridors in Dublin, Cork, subject to planning, and Galway, significantly improving the infrastructure available to support the continued investment in bus services under the overall BusConnects programme. In the interests of brevity, I have attached an appendix, which I hope all members have had time to digest, providing a summary of information on the variety of ongoing projects being managed under the NTA's capital programme, which will be further progressed under the sectoral investment plan for transport. Further details can be provided on any item as required.

This concludes my opening remarks. I welcome any questions for me and Mr. Creegan that the committee may have.

I thank Ms Shaw. She said she has provided an appendix and, for the benefit not so much of members but of people watching the meeting, I want to run through it. It is very detailed. In order that the public will understand the topics that come under the NTA's remit, I will just mention them by name, rather than discussing any of them, for the benefit of listeners. Topics that come under the remit of the NTA include BusConnects Dublin, which deals with network redesign, core bus corridors, next generation ticketing, simplified fares, the transition to zero, livery, stops and shelters. It also has responsibility for MetroLink, the DART+ programme, BusConnects in Cork and sustainable transport corridors, network redesign, the transition to zero, ticketing and livery. BusConnects Galway is also included, as are BusConnects Limerick and BusConnects Waterford. The Cork area commuter rail programme is also under the NTA's remit, as is the Luas in Cork and in Finglas here in Dublin, the Navan rail line, the national train control centre, the active travel programme and, very importantly, the whole question of accessibility. Those are just a number of the key headings under the remit of the NTA. Ms Shaw will be very busy for the period in her new post. I have highlighted the range of topics the NTA deals with because not everybody knows the full range.

Senator Crowe was first to indicate.

I thank Ms Shaw and Mr. Creegan for joining us today. With regard to the MetroLink, does Ms Shaw believe the target of construction beginning in 2027 is likely to be fulfilled? She mentioned the ongoing judicial reviews in terms of planning approval. Presumably they are expected to be completed within the next 12 months. Is there a timeframe for when the NTA expects its next funding distribution under the sectoral investment plan to be finalised? Which parts of the DART programme will be delivered first and what sort of timeframe is envisaged? In terms of BusConnects, as far as I am aware, there were some judicial reviews happening with regard to the planning approvals in Galway at least. Are they ongoing and what kind of a timeframe is expected for those works?

The Senator’s first question was whether we think MetroLink will go to construction in 2027.

All the indications for us are that it will go to construction in 2027. It is intended to start procurement on it early next year. The procurements are quite long and complex, but the start of construction should be teed up for the end of 2027. That is set out in the sectoral investment plan, as the Senator is aware.

In terms of a more detailed funding distribution programme from us, which I think was the Senator's second question, when we get the information from the Department of Transport clarifying what our overall envelope is when it slices off what it needs for the various programmes it is responsible for, it will take us a couple of months after that to put full flesh on what we are doing. Quarter 1 of 2026 is our target, but I am not sure when in quarter 1 it will be until we get our distribution.

The Senator asked which parts of the DART+ programme will advance first. Again, that is set out in the sectoral plan. I think the first thing people will see is the new DART fleet on the northern line to Drogheda. That will happen in 2027. DART+ West will probably start construction in 2027. It has to be tendered first. There are various elements of that, of which one of the early ones will be a large new station in Spencer Dock in the docklands, which interchanges with the Luas red line. Then there will be the depot, which will be out to the west, the electrification and so on. DART+ West will be the first of the infrastructure programmes, but the Senator will see fleet appearing on the northern line in 2027, which is also part of that programme.

With regard to the judicial reviews in Galway, I think there are two judicial reviews on the cross-city link in Galway. I do not have any timeline as to when they will be concluded. They have been going on for quite a while now. I do not know when they will be concluded. Until they are concluded, the city council cannot progress that scheme. I know those reviews are being actively managed through the courts system, but I do not have an end date for them yet.

I thank the witnesses for coming in. I wish Ms Shaw the best of luck with the new job. I will ask about BusConnects in Dublin first. I went through the briefing. The appendix states that there is a contract with a Spanish company, Indra Sistemas - I do not know if I am pronouncing that properly - to develop and implement a ticketing system. Will this include the use of debit or credit cards to get a ticket on a bus?

"Yes" is the short answer.

That is great because I know people are showing a lot of appetite for that system.

When An Bord Pleanála approved the DART+ South West project last year, Irish Rail said it anticipated that construction would start in 2026. A publication from the Department of Transport on 26 November did not include the DART+ South West project. The plan is meant to run from 2026 to 2030, but the construction timeline for the DART+ South West project mentions 2030 and thereafter. What is causing this delay? People love to blame judicial reviews and so on but no judicial reviews have been taken against that project and planning permission has been approved. What is causing this delay?

On an overall basis, there is increased funding provision for public transport in that sectoral plan. A lot of good projects are going to get built on the foot of it. However, we are now in the position that we have more projects available for construction than funding for those projects. Decisions had to be made by the Department in regard to what could be funded and what could not be funded. While some progress has been made on various aspects of DART+ South West, at the moment the funding just is not there for the whole DART programme and therefore DART+ South West is being deferred for that period. There may be other sources of funding available in due course.

Is the reason a lack of Government appetite or is it a logistical issue or a lack of a workforce? What is causing the delay? Why is the Government not allocating the money to the project, in Mr. Creegan's opinion?

Quite simply, it is what I said. There are now more projects available for construction than there is funding available for them. If the Deputy thinks about it, we have four railway orders in the Dublin area at the moment, namely, MetroLink, DART+ West, DART+ South West and DART+ Coastal North. We have railway orders in Cork for projects there. We have 12 BusConnects corridors in Dublin and two in Galway, all of which have gone through the planning process and so on. We are in the happy position that there is a portfolio of projects available to build but, as is always the case, there is a limit to the funding available. That is the constraint at the moment.

Brian Caulfield, a professor in transport in Trinity College, spoke about the new town planned for west Lucan, Adamstown. He said the town was planned around the provision of public transport and the DART line. It proceeded contrary to international best practice. The station was meant to be built first and then the houses around it. A lot of the houses, though not all, have been built. Everyone is complaining to me. I live in Maynooth, County Kildare, and my constituency office is in Naas, so I use the M7. People contact me about the roads all the time. It is a nightmare with traffic. When I am listening to Kfm in the morning, all I hear is that traffic is bumper to bumper. If I have to be in Leinster House for 10 a.m., I have to leave the house at 6.30 a.m or 7 a.m. If I wait until 9.30 a.m. to leave the house, I can get in here in an hour. It is crazy. We do things backwards in this country. We do not sort out the transportation before building these towns, which is completely contrary to international best practice. Does the NTA agree with that assessment?

Partially. Kishoge station was built in 2008 or 2009. There was no development around it for nearly 15 years afterwards and the station did not open. In some places we have been able to get the infrastructure built in advance. The Deputy is right, however, that it has not been the norm everywhere. We know more needs to be done. We had a problem with the planning system for a number of years, which the Deputy is well aware of. That slowed things down. That problem is thankfully over. Now the challenge is a funding one. Lots of things should be built and need to be built and the funding ability is the constraint.

I spoke to Mr. Creegan about DART+ West out to Kilcock. Has the NTA found a site yet? The site it had was not suitable. I could have told the NTA that if it had come to me about it. Has it found a site for it yet?

The short answer is "Yes". We have not announced it. I think I said the same thing the last day. We have found a site. The intention is to make a new planning application and railway order application early next year. There will be some sort of mini-consultation early next year as well. As regards Kilcock, I think I said to the Deputy the last day that we could not include Kilcock in the original DART+ scheme because it was not in the transport strategy. The intention now is to try to line it up in order that it gets delivered concurrently with the overall DART+ West scheme.

Is that going to include a second line? Part of that area has a single line of rail. Will it be double-tracked?

I do not want to say that for definite because I do not know the precise details. I think that will be the case, but I do not want to confirm it yet. The intention is to try to get Kilcock finished concurrently with the rest of the DART+ project.

I encourage the NTA to do that. People say "Just one more mile", but it really is a mile from where the station was planned for Maynooth to Kilcock. More houses are being built in Kilcock all the time and it is a thriving town. It has really developed in the ten years that I was councillor. The town badly needs the DART line.

That is why we made a conscious decision in the last transport strategy update, which was in 2022, to conclusively say that we should extend the DART to Kilcock. That commitment is there.

When is the NTA planning to make the announcement of the new site?

It will be in quarter 1 of 2026. We just do not know when.

In relation to the sectoral investment plan for transport, will Mr Creegan comment on the rationale for not including a commuter rail plan for Limerick in the way one was for Cork? We are very lucky that we have a network of railway lines in Limerick. Thanks be to God, we never dug them up. They are still there and we are reopening the line as far as Foynes for freight next year. We have the line out to Ennis and we have a station coming at Moyross, but there should be a whole system and sequence of commuter rail stations around that area because it is gridlocked at the moment.

BusConnects in Limerick has been delayed a number of times. Can Mr. Creegan definitively say it will be implemented during the time of the plan? Are there any issues there in relation to the timelines?

Deputy Cronin made an incredibly prescient and valid point on the need for transport-orientated dense development. We know that when people move to a community, their transport habits are made within the first year. I would argue that DART+ has been kicked off the list because the Government has decided to prioritise other projects ahead of it. That does not make sense in many ways. The Department of housing is pushing Dublin City Council to rezone land for transport-orientated development and it has a strategic development regeneration area, SDRA, in Kylemore and Inchicore. This is for 5,000 residential units, so it will be a very dense development. A train station is, therefore, needed in Inchicore. In light of that rezoning and development going ahead, I do not understand why the transport that it needs is coming after it, when we all know it should come first. Will Mr. Creegan comment on that?

My final question relates to the delays in the introduction of the new Enterprise fleet due to the legal challenge taken by CAF.

On the commuter rail plan for Limerick, Deputy Sheehan will recall that in the transport strategy we did for Limerick, we said that certain parts should be done early on, but in the bigger picture, we needed development consolidation in a few places and that would be on a slightly longer term. The Department of Transport called out all the large projects in the sectoral plan for transport. It has not listed every single project that is going to be built. Projects like Moyross station will proceed to construction. Work on Ballysimon station will progress to some level and the Foynes line will be completed, as the Deputy is aware. There will be some things happening. However, in the transport strategy plan we did for Limerick and Shannon, the overall rail plan the Deputy alluded to was not envisaged to proceed in the 2020s. It was to proceed post 2030. That was the plan as we had it.

In terms of BusConnects Limerick, there are several parts to it. There is the infrastructure and the network. It is important to say that we have done some work on BusConnects Limerick, in that the full bus fleet in Limerick is now fully electric. In terms of the new network, we have to see what the funding provision is for new services next year. We are not clear on that yet. There is more to be done between the NTA and the Department on that. We do not have a timeline for the Deputy on when the new network will be rolled out. The last time we spoke, I think I said it would be 2027. Our briefing note states it will be 2027.

It keeps getting kicked out.

These things are hard to do. They need several things. They need vehicles. They need drivers, which is the biggest issue, and they need funding. We have to line all three up to make it happen. Our target is 2027 and we have to see that the funding is there to support that.

In terms of DART+ South West and accelerating it to a build station in Inchicore, the Deputy will not find us resisting that.

It is a political decision.

We are promoting the DART+ projects, but I understand, as the Deputy does, that there are decisions to be made. There is not an infinite pot of money. Someone has to decide on what gets funded and what does not get funded. Irish Rail and the NTA are available to build that scheme as soon as the funding is available for it.

We are not directly responsible for the Enterprise fleet. The Department of Transport is responsible for it because it is a trans-border project. There is a judicial review against the procurement. A procedure was implemented to suspend the awarding of that contract and a court case then reversed that suspension. If the contract has not been awarded, it is in the process of being awarded. There will be a court course to deal with the procurement, which will proceed separately. It is my understanding that Irish Rail is running the project and reporting directly to the Department of Transport. It is also my understanding that if that contract has not been signed, it is in the process of being signed. The intended delivery timeline will therefore be followed.

My first question relates to the commitment made to develop a dual track in Clara, County Offaly. I am being slightly parochial. What will be the capacity of the service after the dual track has been introduced compared to what it is now? What sort of timeframe are we looking at?

I am going to give a slight awkward answer to that. We are not directly responsible for that project. Our statutory remit with regard to rail is for the greater Dublin area. We are asked to do certain projects on behalf of the Department of Transport, such as the Foynes line and the Cork line. We are aware of this project because it is in the all-island rail review study, which the members are familiar with, but we are not so involved that I could answer the Deputy's question on what the capacity increase will be.

In relation to the design of active travel routes, will the design manual for urban roads and streets, DMURS, be revised? To put it into perspective, many of these measures were modified to try to introduce traffic calming measures in a subtle sort of way. They have not been effective at all. They have only led to obstacles for HGVs, tractors and trailers or contractors in rural areas. Will they continue as is, or will they be revised any time soon?

The DMURS is a document controlled by the Department of Transport and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. We had some input into its preparation, as had Transport Infrastructure Ireland and some others, but those two Departments control it. I am not aware of any plans to change it.

In relation to public transport in rural areas in particular, which I have raised with Mr. Creegan previously in a similar forum, how will the need for more services in rural areas be addressed? The services have been decimated. At this stage, people are housebound after six or seven o'clock in the evening every day of the week. Local Link is fantastic and it is moving forward where it is operational. However, where people do not have it, there is a total void in relation to transport services. How will that be addressed?

We developed a plan called Connecting Ireland, starting about four years ago. I am sure the Deputy is familiar with it. We tried to design a service network across the whole country that would connect rural areas, villages and towns to each other and to higher level conurbations. We have rolled out a fair bit of that and there is more to do.

There are a lot of routes still to be rolled out. After it is all rolled out, we think we will then probably have the right network and we will have to do things such as increase service levels on some of the routes and put in later night services. These will require funding so we are back to the funding stream. We can do certain things but we can only operate within the funding envelope that we have. The plan we are delivering against is Connecting Ireland, which tries to deal with the types of isolation and non-service issues that Deputy Clendennen has referred to.

Beyond buses, do cars have a role in the service infrastructure?

Without a shadow of a doubt. Public transport in rural areas can only perform a certain level role. It does not suit a lot of people. It will not suit most people. However, it needs to be there for those people who can make use of it and those people who do not have any choice.

Can Mr. Creegan see a Local Link car service?

I will answer the question by saying we have introduced three pilot projects to do with demand responsive services with small buses. These are on Achill Island and in Killarney and parts of Limerick city. It is a van called "Anseo". This is service that people can select like a taxi operation. It is proving very popular and very useful. Potentially it could be rolled out elsewhere although, again, it will need money. It could fill in the type of gap that Deputy Clendennen is alluding to for people with certain needs that do not get met by fully scheduled services. That service would fit the bill.

Our road projects scheduled for construction by 2030 are predominantly for national and regional roads. There are not so many motorway projects. Hopefully Offaly will benefit potentially from the M52 link road in time to come. There is a spine in the midlands where there has been an upgrade of national roads. Does Mr. Creegan think we should have taken a step back, looked at our motorway network and said we need to join Cashel to Ballymahon with a road going north, rather than everything going from east to west?

This is one where I have to say we do not have responsibility. It is for Transport Infrastructure Ireland when it comes to national roads.

I appreciate that but, at the same time, the NTA is a pretty fundamental stakeholder.

Without having looked at it, we would be giving an off-the-cuff answer and it would not be correct either way. I was involved in the motorway building programme over a decade ago and a lot of good things were accomplished. Like everything, we need to revisit these things from time to time. If what Deputy Clendennen is asking is whether there should be a revisitation to see whether we have the right network, we cannot disagree with that.

I will bring up the issue of balanced regional development. It is particularly disappointing that there has not been a commitment to the Waterford, Wexford and Rosslare line, which was in the all-island review last year. From the perspective of the south east, that is really disappointing. When it comes to the Waterford to Dublin line that goes through Kilkenny, there is an ongoing issue with the length of the platform at MacDonagh Station in Kilkenny impacting the number of carriages that can be on the train. This is causing a huge issue as it is a high-use commuter route and people are constantly standing, including people of all ages and elderly people. There is an accessibility issue. I understand why larger urban areas have a higher degree of focus but we have a question about the south east being less well serviced when it comes to a lot of these issues.

The briefing note mentioned all of the accessibility measures that have been put in place. I welcome these but we have an ongoing issue with ghost stations that are not staffed and the impact this has on people with visual impairments and people in wheelchairs who do not know whether they will be able to get onto a train. The Irish Wheelchair Association and Inclusion Ireland came before the transport committee in the previous session and they identified this as a consistent ongoing problem for people with disabilities, in terms of accessing our public transport. It would be good to hear a little about that.

It is also worth mentioning the challenge that people with wheelchairs have in accessing carriages and having carriages that have wheelchair appropriate spaces. Often there are simply not enough wheelchair appropriate spaces and people have to book them well in advance. This has an impact on people with disabilities living their daily lives in an open and accessible way, which the rest of us have the privilege to do. I would welcome the NTA's thoughts on those points.

Outside the greater Dublin area, we have a limited role in rail at the moment. It will be extended next year through a legislative amendment but, right now, we have a limited role. Outside the Dublin area, we do things where we are asked by the Department of Transport. We will not have all of the answers today. When it comes to the station in Kilkenny I have not heard before today that there is a platform issue there. There are many stations where we have lengthened the platform. It is not necessarily a big project. That can be done. The bigger issue might be whether we have the fleet to run longer trains. At the moment, we are short on fleet and we need more. It might be a fleet issue. Lengthening platforms is something that is eminently doable. If it is a problem there, we will raise it with Irish Rail to see how big a problem it is and how easy it is to solve.

We are very conscious of accessibility issues, wheelchair access and other related matters. We put a lot of effort into trying to make sure that what is being done now is fully accessible for people with all types of disabilities. We are dealing with legacy issues. We have stations that go back to the Victorian era. It is a slow process to retrofit them. Senator Stephenson will have seen from the documentation that a lot has happened but we know there is more to do.

In terms of accessing carriages, I do not have a quick answer, other than to say that with the new DART fleet we are purchasing, we gave enormous attention to the platform-to-train interface for wheelchairs. There were only four or five award criteria for the contract and one of them was how good the interface would be to allow wheelchair users to easily board. There is a good solution coming on the new DART fleet. There are definitely accessibility issues on some of the older fleet and older fleet is very hard to retrofit. We really have to replace the fleet with better fleet. We have a transport user advisory group in place in the NTA which has a number of representatives of disability groups. We take their feedback and try to build it into what we do. There are a lot of good things in what is being done but the truth is there is lots more to do.

I also asked a question on the Waterford to Wexford line.

I do not like being Pontius Pilate and saying it is not our responsibility but at the moment that line does not come under our jurisdiction for infrastructure. It is under Irish Rail and the Department of Transport. From memory, it is in the all-island rail review to be reopened as a freight-only line, if I remember correctly. The main connection from Waterford to Dublin is intended to be through Kilkenny, as it is at present. Since it does not fall directly under our remit, I am not 100% sure on it.

I will stick with the Wexford lines and I will start with the line we were just discussing, running from Rosslare to Waterford. This week's news that it is no longer being included in the prioritisation strategy came as a bit of a shock in County Wexford. If we go back to 2022, there were plans, which were well advanced at that stage, for the disused line, which closed in 2010, to be turned into a greenway. Does this week's decision effectively mean the railway line will not be reopening come what may, and that the plans for a greenway should move on? Will this be put on the long finger, leading to continued uncertainty? What are the NTA's views on this? I have another question but I ask for a response to that question first.

The problem is that we are not sure because it is not directly in our remit. It all goes back to what was in the all-island strategic rail review. My recollection, and the Senator should correct me if I am wrong, is that the line is to be reopened for freight use. I see it being reserved for that purpose rather than being converted to a greenway, to answer the question, but when its return to use as a freight line will occur I do not know.

On the early morning commuter trains, if you are living in Gorey in north Wexford, there is the 5.45 a.m. service which will get you go Dublin Connolly for 7.47 a.m. I checked these times in preparation for this meeting. However, if you are in Enniscorthy, in Wexford town or even further south, there is no early morning service corresponding to that and the earliest train that you can get is the 5.59 a.m. from Wexford or the 6.20 a.m. from Enniscorthy which will not get you to Dublin until 8.48 a.m. Obviously, if you are trying to get into work, arriving in Dublin Connolly at 8.48 a.m. is very late. I would urge Mr. Creegan to put the resources in place and do what needs to be done to roll out that earlier train and extend it even down to Enniscorthy and Wexford - just two extra stops. Is that something that can be done or what are the current blockages to implementing that?

I am sure technically it is doable. The issue is whether the capacity is there to carry the people because that train, as it is at present, is a full train. Building on what we said earlier, the platforms along that line are, I think, four-car lengths or three-car lengths only. To compound all that, we do not have any spare rail fleet at present. We need more rail fleet in order to-----

Excuse me, I missed that phrase. What do you not have any more of?

There is not any more rail fleet available. There is no spare rail fleet at present. Even if we could do it technically, we do not have rail fleet to lengthen the carriages because the platforms are not long enough. We will take that away and find out from Irish Rail what the implications would be of extending the current service to Enniscorthy.

It currently stops in Gorey. It would be extending it to the next stop, which is Enniscorthy, and the stop after that, which is Wexford town. With so many people who are commuting from Wexford to Dublin every day or people who are working remotely two days and in the office three days, that would have a real transformational effect. When the stop was first rolled out to Gorey, it had that effect. It is a very busy line, as Mr. Creegan himself says, but we need it to go two stops further.

The issue might well turn out to be it is so busy at present starting at Gorey that if we bring it to start earlier in Enniscorthy and Rosslare and we do not have additional carriages, people will not be able to get on from Wicklow onwards. That could be the issue. Rather than give the Senator an incorrect answer, we will take it away, have a discussion with Irish Rail and give him a fuller answer on foot of that.

I appreciate that.

How long does it take? Is there a pipeline of orders in Irish Rail for additional carriages or what is the pipeline?

The pipeline can be funding dependent as well. You will hear the word "funding" so often. The first pipeline that is delivering extra fleet is the DART fleet. That goes onto the northern line - Dublin city centre to Drogheda. That will release some of the diesel vehicles off that line which then can be cascaded to other lines. The DART fleet, even though it might not be obvious, can also help Gorey and other places by cascading released fleet from it. They come in in 2027 and there will be some opportunity to put other fleet elsewhere then.

Okay. I call Deputy Neville.

I thank the witnesses for coming here today. We have met many times in the past and Mr. Creegan has a fair idea what areas I will be covering. I note there is a huge amount of investment and we have a huge amount of investment plans. The first question I want to ask is about the DART+ South West. That is badly needed. It seems to have gone off the list of projects for 2026 on, despite the fact that it has planning permission and there are no judicial reviews. What are Mr. Creegan's thoughts on that?

We had a discussion on it a few minutes earlier.

Yes.

As I said then, there are lots of good things in the sectoral plan but we are in a position now where we are have more projects available for construction than there is funding available. The reality is that we are not able to fund all the projects that we have got planning consent for now to construct as quickly as we all would like and, within the sectoral plan, it has been identified DART+ West will move ahead and DART+ South West will come slightly later. If funding arrangements change or additional funding streams become available, that position could change and could improve further.

Could it be a case that we keep that project alive? Ultimately, it is dead if it is off the table from 2026 to 2030. If we are putting it out beyond 2031, it will be beyond the lifetime of this Government and the economic circumstances could change. We have billions of euro in extra corporation tax coming in every year. This is a €1 billion project. Surely we could find the money for it. I know it is not in Mr. Creegan's gift, by the way, but I was wondering about the impact when it is taken off. I know Mr. Creegan would probably do it in the morning, if he could. The question remains, though, how we keep it alive at the same time.

In our mind, there is no question. This project is alive. It is not a dead project. For example, the land that has been authorised for purchase through the railway order has to be acquired now. A compulsory purchase order, CPO, has a life of 18 months and if you do not serve your notices within that period, you lose them. Land will be purchased. As far as we see it, design work can continue. Tender documents can be got ready to have it ready for construction.

I genuinely think the scheme is going to happen. If we do not get extra money before 2030, it will be happening around 2030 again. This is not a dead scheme. That would be wrong to say. It is very much alive. It has just not got enough of funding to keep it going at the pace we all would like.

It is a concern, though. On DART+ South West, we are putting a huge amount of houses into north Kildare and we need the infrastructure to go in. This is just another example. Deputy Moynihan is there as well. Lucan, Adamstown and all such places are crying out for this as well. Mr. Creegan is saying it is not dead but, to be honest, it is dead, and I would be the first to say it. I am a Government TD - I am the one who will take the hit for it; I genuinely will - but I do not mind and have no problem calling it out as I see it. What we are seeing here is that it has been put beyond the lifetime of this Government. To my mind, it is dead until somebody says we are getting the green light, and that is the way we have to discuss it. The other one, the one to Maynooth and out to Kilcock, is very much alive in a different way.

We should find some medium-term road to keep it because the biggest issue we have and what concerns builders - we have talked to builders in this committee - about the Government is the fact that it cannot be relied upon to have projects rolling over a period of time. We had something ready to go, it was in the plan, we have planning permission and now we are kind of saying we are not doing anything. I am sure we were saying this was going to get done and doing a roadshow on the basis that it was going to get built, but then it got pulled. It seems so strange and contrary to everything else when we hear that we have so much money. It baffles me. It is something that I have raised directly with the Taoiseach.

As I said, I know it is not in Mr. Creegan's gift. I am well aware of that. I am asking him about the methodology of how to keep it alive, as he outlined, through the tender process. That is what I want to do because we can make the case separately. Ultimately, some of these roads projects will get delayed at some point and the NTA will be sitting on capital projects that will roll into next year.

The DART+ West was brought up about Kilcock. When will that line work or get done? Will it start in 2026? When will shovels be in the ground, although I am sure it is not shovels anymore?

Somebody is using a shovel on site anyway.

Somebody somewhere is using a shovel.

It will go to procurement in 2026 and start construction in 2027.

Will we be starting from Dublin and out towards the west or will it be starting from both sides? I am thinking of bridges and construction. I am thinking, even in construction, of where they are taking out the Leixlip bridge. When will we expect the large-scale construction projects to start?

It is being broken up into different projects covering different geographic areas. One of the early ones to start will be the Spencer Dock station, which is in the docklands, because that is the terminal point. That is one of the items that will take the longest on the project, so that will start quickly. A second one that will start quickly is going to be the depot because we need the depot for trains. Without having the depot, we cannot run the service.

So that could be Kilcock.

The other ones happen. I just do not have a running order for these.

That is fine. Kilcock would be pretty early in the process too, possibly. How do we get projects, such as the bridge in Celbridge, that are not in the NTA’s remit, into its remit? I am just using those examples because, often at this committee, you ask a question of one Department and it will say “No”. For example, you think the bridge projects lies with one Department but it ends up being with another one. Does the NTA have any involvement with road projects or is it purely just the buses and trains?

We have no involvement. It is purely public transport.

It is just the bus. How do we get more buses? We need a denser bus network in north Kildare. Obviously, we are probably not going to have much from an infrastructure perspective here. Does Mr. Creegan see the NTA’s major involvement just regarding the rail then from that perspective?

There are three things. We have plans on the rail side. We want to do DART+ South West. We have plans to do a park and ride at Sallins and bleed people onto the rail system there. Some things will move ahead on that without a shadow of a doubt. The bus system is still going to be vitally important in the Kildare area. That needs to be enhanced over the next few years. Coming in from Kildare, we need to look at some level of bus priority along the routes because there is a lot of congestion and buses are being held up. They are three areas in which we see ourselves working over the next few years.

Going back to what happened last week with the Luas, what will happen in that regard? Will there be a report coming out on that? What is the situation in that regard? That kind of blocked up everyone. What is the risk of something like that happening again?

We have obviously been in touch with TII, which is responsible for the operations of the Luas. There was a fault on one of the lines. It was not completely severed so it was hard to detect. There were a lot of people out trying to find where that fault was. Once it was found, it was fixed quickly. Through that learning, it will start putting in place a different inspection regime and make sure that we have the right plans in place to prevent a similar sort of outage.

The other side to it is that, inevitably, there will always be things going wrong on the network. It is about making sure we have those resilience plans in place so that when something goes wrong, we can help customers and passengers throughout the time in which that disruption occurs. There will be some further information, including the lessons learnt, that will come out from that. Some recommendations will be put in place between the NTA, TII and Luas.

Does the NTA have a role in the timetables of the railway network, both for intercity and local trains?

Yes. We ultimately approve the timetables. We have responsibility for them.

Can the NTA approve-----

I am sorry I said that now.

-----extra trains out of Portlaoise in the morning and especially late at night, because the last train is not adequate for a lot of people? It can only be 45 minutes down the road. There is a train depot in Portlaoise with facilities for maintenance and cleaning. It is a perfect area. We are fortunate in the morning in that trains leave early because they are leaving that depot. We certainly need an additional late train to Portlaoise later at night than we have at the moment, however. Is that on the NTA’s agenda or is it being discussed? When will we see a new timetable with the possibility of that being included? How often are timetables updated?

Timetables are updated once a year.

When is it due next?

Next December.

Did we miss the train this time or what happened?

We missed the train this time. The issue might be whether we have the fleet to run another service. I do not know until we check but we will take that away and find out.

I ask Mr. Creegan to take that away and come back to us on an extra late-night service to Portlaoise. As he knows, Portlaoise has a rail maintenance depot. It is a perfect location to have a train located at.

I could ask other questions about the trains. Some of them are intercity to Portlaoise, which can be a 45-minute run with Portlaoise as the first stop. Other trains – the commuter trains - have over 13 stops before they get to Portlaoise. We will come back to that later, however. I wish to give other members an opportunity-----

To clarify, it is a late train to Portlaoise the Cathaoirleach is talking about.

It can go onto Cork as far as I am concerned. It does not have to finish in Portlaoise. I am not worried about the rest of the country, however.

It is not necessarily coming from Portlaoise to Dublin. Rather, it is the other direction.

Whatever happens after that is up to the NTA, wherever it parks the train for the night. I have no problem in that regard. It is welcome to stop in Portlaoise if that suits the NTA.

I congratulate Ms Shaw on her appointment as CEO. I look forward to working with her. Mr. Creegan and I know each other well and have enjoyed collaborating in this forum in the past. I wish to return to DART+ South West, as Deputies Cronin and Neville already alluded to. I seek clarity on the first point. If I understand correctly the response to the question Deputy Cronin put, funding is the issue. It is not a sequencing thing. If the money were available for DART+ South West tomorrow, the NTA would be able to press "Go" on getting that tender out there and activating the project. Is that true?

Yes.

Okay. With that in mind, and I welcome Mr. Creegan’s indication if additional funding streams come on board, are there aspects of the DART+ West project that are being tendered, or planned for being tendered, that could also incorporate elements of DART+ South West? If funding becomes available at a review point or at some stage in the future, can we build in the contingency that prequalification, procurement barriers and gates for those aspects of the project will still get the go-ahead so that we will not lose time having to go through another tender process for things that we have already tendered for DART+ West?

Within reason, some of that is going to happen. The tendering strategy for DART+ West includes setting up some frameworks that could benefit DART+ South West in due course, but the devil will be in the details. Part of that is true and should be delivered.

Is it the NTA’s intention to try to maximise the overlap as part of that process? As Deputy Neville said, there may well be some road project or something that is judicially reviewed in a year's time and funding then becomes available. We are all keen to ensure that we do not miss the boat if we can design a tender process to be as generous, for want of a better adjective, to maximise the possible reach of it.

The NTA and Irish Rail would like to have that project as a shovel-ready project as soon as possible so that it could be brought forward if some funding stream or funding changes occurred.

That is a principle with which the NTA is approaching the tendering process.

That is why I am saying that this is not a dead project. Rather, it is a live project but it just does not have enough money at the moment.

I appreciate the clarity of the comments in that regard. Moving on to something else, when is the next version of the integrated implementation plan for the greater Dublin area, GDA, due?

It was waiting on the sectoral transport plan, which we now have. We are now waiting, as I said in the opening statement, for the distribution below that so that we get clarity. We have clarity on what exactly our funding stream is for the next five years and that allows us then to prepare the plan. We have to do a consultation on that particular document. It will be quarter 2 next year.

The NTA hopes to have that published by quarter 2 of 2026.

Yes.

What is the cadence of it? Is it every six or five years? When should we expect the next one after that?

It is meant to be published shortly after we do each transport strategy update, which is every six years. The next one will be in 2028.

Okay. With regard to the Luas, a number of Luas projects were not explicitly mentioned in the sectoral plan, although I appreciate that is more for delivery and construction. In terms of design and planning, will Mr. Creegan confirm that the Lucan, Poolbeg, Bray, Cork and Galway Luas projects are all still at a stage of planning, although they might be at various stages, but they are still very much alive in terms of the ambition to deliver them under the transport strategy?

Yes. To take the Luas project for Lucan in particular, planning is continuing on that. It will continue next year. What point it goes to railway order, we do not know yet. At the moment, it is continuing its normal delivery pattern. Similarly, a pre-feasibility study has been completed on the Luas Poolbeg project and work will start on that afterwards. I have given the Deputy a longer answer than I need to. There is a stream of Luas projects that will continue in planning.

And for Cork and Galway?

Cork is continuing and the next stage will be a second round of consultation on a preferred route at some point in the first half of next year. I am not sure when. When it comes to Galway, there is not a firm plan to do Luas in Galway yet. There is a feasibility study to say that it should be considered in the transport strategy for Galway. The sequence in Galway is that we are waiting for An Coimisiún Pleanála to decide on the Galway ring road because that is central to the transport strategy.

As soon as it decides that, we will finish the transport strategy and make a call, following consultation, on inclusion of a light rail line. I think there will be a light rail line included on it. It is only at that point the design work will kick off.

I think it is fair to say that, at the end of this Government, we will see things like the Luas to Lucan arriving at the railway order stage and others having emerging routes defined and we will see progress on all five of those projects.

We will see progress on the five, yes.

I am very enthused to hear that. How is the NTA thinking about the interface between the BusConnects core bus corridors and Luas projects as they are designed? In my own constituency, for example, it is very welcome that the Liffey Valley bus corridor is being commenced. Lucan will commence in the next two years, but then we will have the Luas to Lucan and the knock-on effects of other Luas tracks. How is the NTA thinking about the interface between the work being done as part of the BusConnects and the Luas routes being planned at the moment?

In our last transport strategy we identified that certain BusConnects corridors over time should transition to becoming a combined light rail and bus corridor. That will happen in certain cases. In the case of the Luas to Lucan, it is still at the route options assessment stage and some routes overlap BusConnects quite a bit and others do not. That needs to be concluded to allow us to make a call on what the level of interaction is. One way or another, if it interacts with BusConnects and needs to be built, we have already identified how we can transition from the bus lane into a combined bus and Luas lane in due course.

Is that as a general principle or geographically specific to each one?

That is as a general principle.

I noticed in the sectoral plan there is very little direct reference to park-and-ride development. There are other projects that are specifically mentioned, but in terms of park-and-ride there is no explicit mention of where and when park-and-ride will be developed. I know there is a park-and-ride strategy for Galway but, unfortunately, progress on it has been quite slow. Why was it not in the sectoral plan?

The Deputy would have to get a fuller answer from the Department of Transport, but in terms of detailed projects, the sectoral plan was only really dealing with the major projects above €200 million which includes most of the DARTs, the metros, and the BusConnects, which are on that scale. The smaller projects will not be called out directly but will still get some funding. Park-and-ride sites, as the Deputy knows, are not of that scale. They are much smaller in scale and I suspect that is part of the reason they are not called out.

As we said in our opening statement, when we get the funding information from the Department of Transport and when we flesh out our five-year plan based on the money available, we will then be able to clearly identify what park-and-ride developments we can pursue and be honest about which we cannot pursue if we do not have the money for them. There is more to do in that area. I would not read into the sectoral plan that the project is not happening; it is just that the sectoral plan is concentrating on the larger projects.

There are some active travel plans that are specifically mentioned in the sectoral plan that would not cost in excess of €200 million. There are some in Galway that are mentioned that would be a small fraction of that. Castlepark Road is mentioned and the Western Distributor Road is mentioned.

We are planning a park-and-ride facility at the end of Western Distributor Road. It is less than €10 million.

Having mentioned those two projects, I must express my frustration that the opportunity to develop bus priority measures while we were undertaking the active travel measures along the Western Distributor Road is going to impede the success of the park-and-ride facility. That is because of the decision to not proceed with the bus priority measures.

I do not have the full details of that. I thought we had reached a position with Galway City Council whereby we had compromised on both sides and come up with a something that allowed both projects to proceed, but maybe I am wrong.

I have not been made aware of the bus-priority measures along that road progressing. However, I have been advised last month that the park-and-ride project is almost at a point of lodging a planning application. It will not be the success it would be if the bus priority measures were along the road. I am concerned about that and, even though I welcome them, I am concerned that we are pursuing the development of the cycle lanes on the road and not doing the bus priority measures at the same time.

I do not have enough information to give the Deputy a clear answer on that.

The Dublin Road bus corridor recently got a planning grant. Are we progressing that?

I am not sure. In the text of the sectoral investment plan it says there are corridors planned in Dublin, Cork and Galway subject to planning. We need to work out the details to see where that progresses. We have two corridors approved in Galway: Cross-City Link, which is subject to judicial review, and Dublin Road, which I think is still in the judicial review period. We would like to progress the Dublin Road project. It is a really good scheme that is straightforward enough in a lot of ways. However, until we put flesh on this plan, which we committed to do at the beginning of the year when we said it would be done by quarter 1, we will not be able to conclusively say we will get that project off the ground.

A lot of what is proposed in the sectoral plan for rail around Galway is quite positive. The only concern I have is what follows the progression of the development of the five platforms in Ceannt Station. I am not familiar enough with logistics and transport operations, but I can see issues when we have additional services on the western rail corridor. The sectoral plan mentions a potential Galway to Waterford rail service. When we include the Galway to Dublin service, I am concerned about potential issues in that it is a single track to within 200 m or 300 m of the five platforms. Are there plans for how that can be overcome?

Irish Rail, funded by the NTA with consent from the Department of Transport, is doing an analysis on how to increase the capacity on that line from Athenry to Galway and east towards Athlone. There is a piece of work on going to see how to increase the capacity. Whether that means a full double track or passing loops, it has to be sorted out as part of it. There is a solid recognition that there needs to be additional capacity on that line.

On active travel, the Connemara greenway is mentioned in the sectoral plan, but I understand the NTA has decided to not proceed with part of the Connemara greenway, namely, the part in the city that crosses the River Corrib on the old rail abutments at Woodquay. I understand the city council wants to pursue it but is advising its members that the NTA, which had agreed to fund it to a certain point, has now withdrawn that agreement.

I do not know the full details. I have peripheral knowledge of it. I think that is an expensive scheme and it is a question of whether we have to stop everything else in Galway to do it because we do not have the funding for it. I will get the Deputy a fuller answer on that issue.

I am delighted to get the opportunity to talk to the NTA today because I am very frustrated regarding Portlaoise from my years as a county councillor. We had the Portlaoise northern orbital route, PNOR, on the plan and it was taken off the plan. I was waiting for it to pop out of this magic envelope that was opened up recently, but there was no sign of it at all. When and where are we placed for the PNOR? I congratulate my two colleagues from Offaly who got money for the far side of Tullamore in Offaly. All the traffic that goes to their road comes from either Portlaoise or Emo. It is a total joke because we are completely choked in Portlaoise. My colleagues from Offaly know this and will avoid it and go down through Emo and by the Rock of Dunamase. There are heavy vehicles going through Emo passing the two schools and it is the same in Portlaoise. The only orbital route in Portlaoise for a lorry to get out through is to go down by all the schools. We have another proposal for a school there for 1,200 pupils. I am pleading with the NTA today to put the PNOR on the agenda. We were promised this many years ago and it did not happen.

I want to mention Mountmellick and I will be straight up with witnesses and be public about it. The proposed bypass at Mountmellick goes through two GAA clubs, The Rock and Mountmellick. I do not know how that came about or who drew it up but I am asking that they go back and draw a line where both the Cathaoirleach and I can try to get funding for it. Who is going to buy out two GAA clubs? It is nonsensical. There are alternatives routes, we all know that. That is the second point I wanted to make.

The third point I would like to make is about the train service. Putting my two hands up, I use public transport if I can at all. The only time I cannot do it, and I do not expect the NTA to lay on a special train for me or anybody else, is when we are sitting late on a Wednesday night. It is very difficult. If it was not for my friend Seán giving me a lift home, I would probably have to stay in the Dáil overnight. The point I want to make is that the last train to Portlaoise goes at 10.10 p.m. I am not just talking about me but about all the people who use the train from Portlaoise and further afield. The train at 11.20 p.m. goes to Kildare. That train must stop and sleep in Kildare, or else it comes back to Dublin. It does not go any further. Surely it could go down to Portlaoise or the whole way to Cork. We have a station in Portlaoise where it could stop. I cannot understand why the train cannot go the extra few miles.

Will the NTA please look at the rationale for the number of trains going through Ballybrophy without stopping? There are two trains in the morning. A lot of students have contacted me about it and could use the train from Ballybrophy to get to college. They are standing there and the trains are going by. That is nonsensical. The timetable could even be changed during school times. It is shockingly frustrating to stand on a platform. They see that the train is not full, but it will not stop for two minutes - in, out, gone. We have to get proper thinking on this and have a review of it.

I do not know whether it is the NTA's remit, but another issue relates to the Leap card. A lot of people are asking me about the Leap card. I think it extends to Newbridge or Kildare but it does not come the whole way down. Deputy McCormack would want it in Offaly as well. If the NTA could do something about the Leap card, it would be great.

Please tell us about the Portlaoise northern orbital route, PNOR. At the moment, we have no money. Not alone is there zero money, but it is embarrassing. I am sent up here to do a job. The Cathaoirleach has been here longer than me. He is even cleverer at this than I am. We did not get any money from the PNOR.and that is not right. I do not expect the witnesses to answer me today but they might email us with a response. Who actually sits down and makes the decision not to give anything to Portlaoise? Obviously someone does not like us. To be fair, when Brian Cowen was Taoiseach - I met him the other night at a function - he got a complete bypass at Tullamore left and right. What did we get? Nothing. It is time for the NTA to look at us and give us something in Portlaoise. We are the single biggest expanding town in Leinster at the moment. That is no reflection on Tullamore or anything, but please do not choke us.

I will compliment the NTA. We have the ride-on ride-off bus at the moment. We are after getting bicycles into Portlaoise. It has been a huge change for us. It is working fantastically. People are only getting used to it. I call it the hop-on hop-off bus. Senior people were previously at home in their houses at night, and a lot of people will not give €15, €20 or €25 for a taxi. They would rather get a few cans and sit at home. However, they will get the €2 hop-on hop-off bus, which is fantastic. It is great for their mental health and it is great if they meet people.

There were a few questions there. The witnesses can respond to what they can, and anything they do not have the answer for can be sent later and we will forward it to the Deputy.

On the bus service in Portlaoise that was introduced at the beginning of this year, we think it is a super service. There is great feedback on that.

The PNOR is not us.

Sorry. Mr. Creegan could have told me that before I started. These people chop and change a lot and Mr. Creegan could be in that position shortly. If not, he will know somebody who is responsible for it.

I think it is a regional road. The Department of Transport has ultimate approval over it. It is the same with Mountmellick. I think it is a regional road there as well with the Department of Transport.

Will the Chairman bring in whoever is responsible and I will be here that day?

Absolutely. I will make sure of that.

They cannot get away on us. That is all I will say.

The train service in Portlaoise and the last train were raised earlier and we have undertaken to come back. Deputy Aird raised trains going through Ballybrophy without stopping. We will have to look at that. I do not know what the issue is.

The Deputy raised the Leap card. We have gone as far as we can with the Leap card system. We are now rolling out a new system that will be in place in two years' time, 2028, that will allow debit and credit cards and mobile phones to be used for payments. That is the one that we will see being used around the country. We have probably gone as far as we can go with the Leap card. The technology is 20 years old at this stage. We cannot do much more with it.

That is disappointing because we are encouraging people to use public transport.

I thank Deputy Aird. We will come back with all the information.

I thank Mr. Creegan and Ms Shaw for coming in. Unfortunately, I was not here earlier. If any of the questions I ask have been asked, they might tell me. While we are here representing the country, we are also looking after our local areas as well. My first question is on the train line between Tullamore and Dublin and the twin tracking, or at least putting in more passing areas in order that we can have more trains on the line. Moving on from that, the NTA states it is still awaiting confirmation of the exact funding distribution under the sectoral investment plan. When will this funding be formally confirmed to the NTA? What projects are paused or slowed due to this uncertainty?

This is between us and the Department of Transport. It knows its overall allocation for public transport. It now has to slice off what it needs for the projects it is in charge of. It has to fund Irish Rail to do asset maintenance. It has to fund the Enterprise and a few other things. It will be telling us within weeks. It is not holding up anything other than our ability to prepare a more detailed plan. Projects are continuing without delay. They will give us the information shortly. We will then be able to flesh out all the smaller details that sit below this plan. It is holding nothing up physically, it is just holding up a plan that we need to do.

That is good to hear. Given the lack of clarity on funding below the €200 million threshold, how can the committee be assured that smaller but critical projects are not being deprioritised?

I think the answer to that is, as we said at the beginning, we are going to produce a more detailed five-year plan, which will say what we can do with smaller projects. By implication, it will also be saying what we cannot do because we can only work within the funding envelopes we have. We aim to have that finished in quarter 1 of next year. That will put some flesh on what can and cannot happen.

Will Mr. Creegan outline how the NTA will ensure value for money and delivery across multiple megaprojects running concurrently?

That is a challenge. There are going to be resource constraints on all the big projects. We are doing some work with the MetroLink team and others on how we increase the level of resources available for construction in Ireland to try to control that to some degree. The reality is that some of these projects will require people to come from abroad to build them. We do not have the skills in Ireland in tunnelling and a few other things. Some work is going on there and there is more to be done.

Will the NTA confirm whether cost escalation allowances are built into the current MetroLink budget, given inflation and construction market pressures?

There is a big exercise at the moment to update the cost estimate for MetroLink. It is putting aside a pot of money for inflation, aligned to the best projections we have for construction inflation. Another pot of money has been set aside for risk and contingency, to deal with unknown events that could occur during the project. That should be finalised and considered by the Government in the first half of next year.

How frequently will the committee receive formal progress updates on the MetroLink and other major projects once procurement begins?

We will be guided by what the committee needs and wants. We are happy to attend whenever or provide information at any point. We will be guided by the committee.

I thank Ms Shaw and Mr Creegan for being here this afternoon.

I am not a member of the committee but I wanted to come down and ask a few questions. I have been following the debate from my office.

There are a few points. First, I sit on the Oireachtas transport committee. In this very room this morning, we had a joint sitting of the Oireachtas transport and disability matters committees. Across from where Mr. Creegan and Ms Shaw are sitting, there were people representing many different strands of the disability sphere. We had people who are blind and people who are wheelchair users. In their opinion, the term "active travel" means able travel. We were all coming quite positively minded towards active travel but they said the current designs around active travel were very ableist. There are new - I hope I am using the correct terminology - platform-style bus stops that are more raised. There are long, continuous footpaths. There are suburbs now getting footpath and cycleway connectivity into town centres which they never had. This is fantastic but - there are a few buts along the way - the witnesses also mentioned that very often when they want to cross roads now, they come off the footpath, where there is tactile paving, and they have to cross a cycleway before they get onto the pedestrian crossing.

Is there anything the NTA could say here today to allay some of their concerns? Was it a debate Ms Shaw and Mr. Creegan were able to follow - maybe they were not aware that meeting was happening here this morning - and are there any comments they could make on it?

We were not aware of the meeting but we are familiar with the issues. The Deputy called them platform bus stops; they are sometimes called island bus stops, where a cycle track that runs along the edge of the road and when it comes to the bus stop, to avoid merging the pedestrians waiting at the bus stop with cyclists, the cycle path diverts to the back of the bus stop, leaving the bus stop sitting on an island. That is where the term comes from. It creates conflicts because people then accessing the bus stop have to cross over the cycle track to get to it, but every solution you can examine at those bus stops means an interaction of some sort.

One solution is to put the cyclist back out on the road. There is then no interaction with the bus stop or with pedestrians and cyclists. However, there is an interaction between cyclists and the biggest vehicles on the road. If you try to bring the cyclists along the front of the bus stop, there is an interaction with the people waiting to board and alight on the bus. There is no perfect solution.

We have set up and consulted a group of representatives of various disability groups in what is called The WayFinding Centre. This a venue developed in Glasnevin that has replicas of island bus stops, buses and trams. We have had various workshops there to try to work through - there is no perfect solution - what is the best compromise across all of it. Some progress has been made but we have not got to the point of agreement yet. However, there is still work going on.

Would it be fair to say the NTA would consult with the disability sector or be willing to get them more on board in design?

The disability sector is involved in every one of those workshops to try to work through the solution. Everyone has recognised there is no perfect solution.

I thank Mr. Creegan for that. I agree with Deputy Aird in terms of late-night trains. I use the train quite a lot. In fact, on Tuesdays I very often commute from County Clare to here and back in the same day. Once you switch off on the train, get the laptop out and listen to the radio on the headphones, you could be anywhere. It is a great way to get work done and distance covered. However, again, many people who are now living down the country and are using trains feel the infrastructure is quite good and the trains are very comfortable but more could be done for late-night scheduling.

There seems to be an hourly service from Heuston Station down the country but not at 8 p.m. It goes from early morning right through on the hour and then there is one at 7 p.m., none at 8 p.m., one at 9 p.m. and that is it. Like Deputy Aird, I would love a later train, as would students attending college here in Dublin, but there are also nights when there could be a soccer match on in the capital or there could be a Taylor Swift concert. The NTA could be sweating the assets of the railway system a little more.

We took enough of a job to look at a late train to Portlaoise. We might put a bit of context around that late train generally and why we cannot do more because there is a reason and we will lay it out for the committee Part of the reason is that it costs extra money to run those extra rail services. The other part is that those trains have to be positioned in a different place for the morning services and it might not be as easy to do it as people think. We will put together a note on the whole thing, including trains to Portlaoise, and send it to the committee.

If the Chairman will allow me, I would like to ask about one more thing. We have long been hearing the NTA is going to approve an Ennis town bus service in the new year. It is the largest town in Munster and one of the largest towns in Ireland not to have city status. Everyone is anxiously waiting to hear what will happen on that. Is there any good news the NTA can share with us today?

We have a contractor selected to run the Ennis town bus service and the intention is it will be launched in quarter 1 of next year. It might drift into quarter 2 but it is our objective to launch that service in Ennis in the first half of next year.

I call on Deputy Healy-Rae next. Before he begins, I have to take a call for one minute and ask Deputy Crowe to take my seat.

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I am glad the witnesses are here today and I thank them very much for coming. I have a few questions. Stephen Kent was here previously regarding the bus stop in Farranfore. It is a busy bus stop. The bus is between Killarney and Tralee, where there is one going to Tralee - we will say on the half hour - and one coming from Tralee, so there are two buses coming and going. These buses are stopping in the middle of the street in Farranfore and this has been going on for years now. People are standing in the rain because there is no bus shelter there or anything.

Someone then drives them into the yard of the local chemist where there are a number of people waiting for buses to come to put people on them and there are people waiting in the yard to pick up people who are coming off them. The question I asked Mr. Kent was if the bus stop could be moved down about 200 yd into the railway station yard. I have got no answer since. I got a previous answer when I was a county councillor that the buses could not come out on the road and would not be able to turn. However, I have a bus myself and a bus licence, and I promise I will drive the bus into the yard and show them I can do it. I am sure they will be able to do it as well but whatever hang-up they have about doing it, it must be sorted out.

It is not fair to have people standing in the rain continuously and we know how much rain we are getting. Kerry gets more than its share and we must do something about that too. We are also obstructing this man, who is paying rates and everything, and his business with cars parked in his small yard all the time. People come for medicine, prescriptions and all that and they can hardly get into the yard at times. It is grand but it could be sorted out because the railway station is the one company. Did anything come of my question to Stephen Kent?

As regards the bridge that was planned to join the railway station and the bus station in Killarney town, we have heard it has been knocked off the shelf and we are wondering why. If people arrive on the train, they have to walk out the door of the train station, down past the Great Southern Hotel, across the railway road and up the street towards the bus station. That is not fair with bags and different things, and Killarney is a very busy town with tourists. I ask that this please be sorted out.

We have a great service now between Killarney and Kenmare, which goes through Kilgarvan, but it seems to have the biggest of buses. A size down would help because there are bad turns in the road and the buses are even meeting each other. They have to go well over the white line to go around some of the bends; otherwise, their tail would get caught up on footpaths and different things. It is only a thought because I have a mid-seater bus myself - 24 or 25 seats - but there are ones all the way up and you do not have to have the largest one. I am just curious as to whether the witnesses have anything to say on that.

To take those three questions, I think the Deputy spoke to Stephen Kent, when he was here, about the Farranfore bus stop. Mr. Kent was to get back to the Deputy but he is now retired. I will commit to reverting to the Deputy on the Farranfore stop. I do not know what the answer will be, whether it is good or bad, but we will come back to the Deputy with a clear answer on it and will do so quickly.

On connecting the bus and railway stations in Killarney, I am familiar with that issue. We looked at it and it is possible to connect them but it would cost a few million euro. We genuinely thought it was not worth spending the money on it, to be open with the Deputy. People can walk around to make the connection, although I accept it is about 400 m. It was a choice between spending €2 million or €3 million to provide wheelchair access in another station or doing that connection and we thought that wheelchair access in other stations represented better value. It is possible to do it but we just do not have enough funding to move it to the top of the list. That is the honest answer on that.

On the road between Killarney and Kenmare and the larger buses, that is an operator choice. They probably have so many passengers that transitioning to a smaller bus would not make sense. They would have to have two drivers and two buses to cover it. I suspect that is part of it but knowing some of the roads down there, I can imagine that with double-deck coaches, it is not easy to navigate.

I can assure Mr. Creegan that the bus is never full. We are very appreciative of the service. It is suiting everyone. It is helping the community a lot but maybe the option of going a size down could be looked at. It would make a big difference for the drivers in terms of safety on those winding roads. Even going through Kilgarvan village there is a right bad bend. I have seen buses meeting there and they have to back up and when there are cars behind them, it creates a bit of furore. It is only a thought and maybe it could help.

I will enquire of the operators as to whether it is possible.

I have a few questions, some of which might not be in the NTA's remit. The information note on accessibility sent to the committee says that the NTA works with and funds local authorities to install wheelchair-accessible bus stops at identified locations around the country and on the installation of both bus shelters and seating at bus stops. I would not expect the witnesses to have the information with them today but could the NTA provide a detailed note on that funding by local authority? There is obviously a division within the NTA that deals with the local authorities. Is it up to the local authorities to come forward with proposals for additional bus stops in their area or is that up to the NTA? Is there a framework in place? How is the issue initiated? I think I already know the answer to this, but on what basis does the NTA decide, when it is installing or upgrading a bus stop, to install a bus shelter? What level of population merits a shelter as opposed to just a stop, particularly in some of the smaller towns?

The document also mentions the fact that the NTA is funding Irish Rail to install new footbridges and lifts at its stations to ensure that everyone can access both platforms in two-platform stations. I ask the NTA to give us a list of what is on its programme in that context. For example, Portlaoise is one such station where there is currently access on one side. The NTA might give us a list of what is planned over the next couple of years at different locations.

A big issue for commuters, which was not mentioned much today, is parking at the train stations. I know that is not the job of the NTA but in every large urban where the number of commuters has increased, parking on local roads and in local housing estates causes issues. Cars are taking over some housing estates all day when people are gone to work.

The NTA's notes say that due largely to the grant support system in place for the purchase of wheelchair-accessible infrastructure, the number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles in the taxi fleet has now increased to approximately 24%. The percentage is lovely but how many vehicles are we talking about? I have no concept of that. How does that system work? If people apply for a taxi licence, are they told that they must have a wheelchair-accessible vehicle? The NTA might provide a note on that, rather than taking up a lot of time explaining it now. If we get it in writing, we will be able to circulate it to all of the committee members who are not present now.

On free travel, it is my understanding that there is a subvention for free travel but I do not know how that system works. Who gets the subvention for everybody who has a free travel pass and their companions? Does it cover the costs of the scheme? How is it estimated? Who decides the figure for each of the different recipients? Does it reflect the cost of running those services? Finally, I am interested in the exchanging of tickets between different transport companies. I saw last week that when the Luas line was down because of an electrical fault, tickets could be used on the buses, which was great. The Luas service was down for more than a day. I ask Mr. Creegan to provide a note on how that operates and we will circulate it to members.

Is there any particular issue that the witnesses want to comment on now?

We would probably be better off providing a note rather than half answers.

Yes. You have a list of queries now and you can check back through the secretariat. Does anyone else wish to contribute?

I just have one last query. Once again, Mr. Creegan and Ms Shaw are very welcome. I emailed Mr. Creegan previously and have directed questions to him when we have talked about these issues on other occasions. Last week, I raised with his office the issue of late-night rail services for December and the benefits of same. I have used the NightLink bus service on many a night for many years and it is fantastic. I got a reply back but that was my opening salvo. How will it work with the DART when DART+ is finished? What will the times be for rail services? Will they be 24 hours? What does Mr. Creegan envisage the situation being in that regard, from an operational point of view? What will the interim position be and how do we get to the point where we have late-night trains?

I do not think we will have 24-hour trains because Irish Rail needs to do maintenance work on the tracks and there is no way around that. Later trains are possible, though, but again, it is primarily down to funding. These things revolve around funding. Those extra services would cost a chunk of money to run. It is fine for Christmas week - that can be managed - but later on, we would need extra funding to do it. If funding is available and the fleet and drivers are available, it is possible to do some additional late services. We would have to tease it out with Irish Rail. It still needs a maintenance window every night but maybe it could be reduced. Maybe late-night services would not be run every night, but only at weekends, which is what the Deputy suggested. That is possible but we need to get past a few things first, including building out the DART network, figuring out a maintenance regime and particularly whether it can be reduced to four or five hours per night, and determining if the funding is there to support it.

My other little bugbear is that the trains from Maynooth are all stopping in Connolly Station. It is something that I will keep working on and I will follow up on it with Mr. Creegan. I thank him very much for his time today. It is very much appreciated.

I thank Ms Shaw and Mr. Creegan for assisting the committee today. A total of 14 Oireachtas Members asked questions today, many of whom are not members of this committee. Their questions were very welcome and the level of attendance of non-members shows the importance of the work of the NTA for the people we represent. I ask that any information requested by members that was not available today be provided to the committee in writing. The normal timeframe for such correspondence would be two weeks but in this instance we will say 12 January because we are in the Christmas period. I ask the witnesses to revert to the clerk to the committee as soon as possible if there are any issues with getting the information to us by 12 January. As there is no other business, we will now adjourn.