Mr. Cormac O'Rourke:

As Senator John O'Mahony is not present, I shall first respond to the questions posed by Deputy Robet Troy.

Similar to Ms Cassidy, I was not appointed through the Public Appointments Service. It is a matter for the Minister to appoint members. I understand reappointments are made directly by the Minister.

On the question on savings, the original estimate of €3 million came from an bord snip nua, the group chaired by Mr. Colm McCarthy. It was he who suggested the merger of the Railway Procurement Agency and the National Roads Authority. Let us say €3 million is the baseline figure and compare it with the figure of €10 million. When the merger took place, there were just over 300 staff in the two organisations. We were in the depths of the financial crisis at the time and the employment control framework set the figure at 250. We have got the number down to 260 and the employment control framework has not been changed since. However, we can make business cases to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and have done so successfully for the appointment of staff outside the employment control framework.

I agree with the Deputy that the Luas cross-city service has caused major disruption in the city centre, which is regrettable. We had very significant engagement with the National Transport Authority and Dublin City Council. We had a public office on Dawson Street which was a drop-in centre and many people availed of the opportunity to make representations. There has, therefore, been extensive engagement. It is fair to say a lot of work was done before we started the process on what it would take to transit the city centre.

Our original simulations showed a journey time from St. Stephen's Green to Broombridge of approximately 21 minutes. That was probably over-optimistic in optimising the sequencing of traffic lights, which is matter for Dublin City Council, rather than Transport Infrastructure Ireland. There are also issues with motorists' behaviour. In one well publicised case a Luas tram blocked O'Connell Bridge because a motorist had failed to clear a yellow box. The Garda is policing the yellow boxes at the junctions of Burgh Quay and O'Connell Bridge and Hawkins Street and Pearse Street. We hope motorists will change their behaviour over time and not enter yellow boxes unless they can clear them.

The other issue causing slower journey times is a temporary 10 km/h speed limit imposed by the Commission for Railway Regulation. This safety measure which we had not anticipated was introduced at the last moment. The speed limit on O'Connell Street equates to a slow jogging pace and is only a little faster than a reasonable walking pace - 6 km/h. We have realised the behaviour of pedestrians, cyclists and motorists improves over time. If we go back over the past 12 years, we will find that the number of people walking out in front of trams, the number of cyclists getting in the way of trams and the number of collisions between trams and motorists have reduced significantly and we are hopeful this will be repeated over time. We estimate that the journey time from St. Stephen's Green to Broombridge will reduce from the current 26 or 27 minutes to approximately 23 or 24 minutes. On the first day of operation the journey time was approximately 30 minutes. We are making progress, albeit slowly.

In terms of population increase, I am an engineer who has worked in finance, rather than as a demographer. As such, I am not qualified to comment on the projection models. The ESRI model was based on the 2016 census and I understand the national planning framework data were based on the 2011 census. We are examining what would be the effect of faster population growth. To assess journey times throughout the country, we need to drill down into small cell data, rather than the overall population.

As to whether we will have the capacity to roll out the major infrastructure, the short answer is yes. We will manage and can add additional staff. We also use outsourcing. If we do not have the ability to do design in-house, we will outsource it to consulting engineers.

I was surprised by Deputy Robert Troy's comment that we had not applied for the Juncker funds, as they are known. It is my understanding - I may be incorrect, but I will revert to the Deputy on the matter - that the bulk of the €20 billion made available for infrastructure was in debt. We received considerable support from the European Investment Bank for the M17-M18 and Luas cross-city projects. The bank was highly supportive at the time when the country was struggling to raise money on international markets.