Mr. Michael Kennedy:

The Deputy mentioned our predictions but the private sector also made predictions. It put its money behind the scheme and it did its own traffic predictions. We have found that internationally, traffic prediction on toll schemes is not up there in the 95th percentile in terms of accuracy.

There have been many examples in Australia, Spain and elsewhere of toll schemes which have not performed as expected. Over the past decade or so, one of the lessons that has been learned is that traffic forecasting in a tolled environment is very difficult and that is particularly true in an urban context. I mentioned Limerick earlier, and Waterford would be similar in terms of the cities making forecasting a little harder to do. That is what is coming to bear on these schemes.