Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will begin with the Deputy's point about new buses. I agree with him. As he well knows, buses carry more people that any other form of public transport in Ireland and what we are doing here is modernising the fleet of our two main public bus companies. I expect and believe this will lead to an improvement on the quality of service people see in the future.

As regards the public consultation process on the railway line, this is the very reason I decided to put options out to the public at this stage. If I look at how these decisions have been handled in the past, sometimes there is a big discussion, a lot of which can take place in private for understandable reasons, and a big decision is then made about a single project. Lots of people then have questions regarding why something else was not considered, whether certain things were taken into account and so on. By having a period of public consultation up to the middle of January I am hoping to give everybody an opportunity to put in their view. At the end of the day we are going to have to make a decision about progressing a single project. I hope the decision we make will be better informed by giving people the opportunity to send in their views.

Deputy Ellis also touched on the matter of Irish Rail and Mr. Franks, and I apologise for not fully acknowledging his question. The €45 million investment is a really substantial development in funding work that needs to be done. By making funding available from the Exchequer, we are making a very positive contribution to the balance sheet of Irish Rail and therefore to the CIE group. There will be further work and further decisions on this in the future but I am very pleased to be bringing in this funding today to build on the fact we have maintained the PSO levels for next year for the first time in many years. Now we are able to add to that with this injection of needed capital funding into the companies.

The reason for the additional €5 million funding for Luas cross-city is that, although the original budget figure was €32 million, the utility works are ahead of schedule at the moment so more funding is needed this year for that work. That brings the figure up to €37 million for this year. I take his point on the potential disruption across the city and acknowledge the huge support we have gotten from the business community in Dublin.

I personally chair a Luas cross-city working group that meets regularly to consider this matter and I am pleased to see that as Operation Open City now is up and running to make the city easier to get around during the Christmas period, much of the hoarding and work that was taking place on Dawson Street, for example, has been removed to make it easier for people to get around. However, I should add that even more work will begin in January.