Mr. James Hart:

In the interests of time, I would like to adopt all of the thanks that has already been heard from every body else. There is one I wish to add in particular, and that is to Deputy Shortall for making the representations that brought about our invitation.

I have two substantive points to make but before I do, perhaps I can give a small bit of context. I am the father of two boys. The elder is in naíonáin shinsireach, senior infants, in Scoil Mobhi and the younger is at the naíonra Tír na nÓg which is in the clubhouse of Na Fianna, and he will be going on to na ranganna sóisireacha in September. All other things being equal, I would expect them to then go on to Scoil Chaitríona.

They also attend the Na Fianna nursery every Saturday where also I do handball mentoring. Put very simply, the vast majority of their waking hours are spent on this site and will be until they are 18 years of age.

There is a very popular phrase: short-term pain for long-term gain but the one sector of our society one cannot say that about is school-age children. They get one shot at getting the education they need and getting the intellectual skills and the social skills to make everything else in their lives possible. It is genuinely heartbreaking to see that threatened.

The two substantive points I have are to echo what Ms de Grae said about public consultation being extended. It is a generous offer but it really just means, as Mr. Nolan pointed out, an extension of uncertainty for the schools. That does not mean, however, that we do not think there needs to be iterative stakeholder consultation. There absolutely must be. What do I mean by iterative stakeholder consultation? It is not what we have had so far.

The committee will have heard the responses to Deputy Rock's questions about whether the descriptions of the potential site that we have provided are accurate. The committee will particularly have heard the first part of TII's answers which is that its representatives do not know because they have not looked at it.

It is not the only thing they have not looked at. They have not looked at the environmental constraints specific to the site. I can say that with some assurance, because in the environmental constraints report, when they look at air quality, noise and dust and at vibration, they have done desktop studies of the entire study area of MetroLink, also known as Dublin, and have come to the non-startling conclusion that there are a lot of schools, hospitals, and other community facilities in Dublin. That led to the conclusion that, for the purposes of deciding the emerging preferred route, they would not look at those factors, because wherever the route goes, it is going to have an environmental impact.

That is fine to a point, but it is not fine when that leads to the decision to propose a tunnel boring launch site bounded in its perimeter by a naíonra, primary school and secondary school. There should have been red flags but from what we have been provided with, there were not. As I have read every page of the public consultation documentation, I am confident in being able to say that.

What is proper engagement? It is identifying and telling us what the construction work will involve. Second, it is to work with us to scope what are the environmental and cultural constraints on that site. Third, if that remains the preferred option, it is to explain to us, only in headline terms, what are the mitigations that TII and NTA have in mind that will enable them to abate the nuisance of noise, dust and those factors and to ameliorate the health and safety concerns we have. If TII and NTA are not doing that, they are not engaging in consultation in any meaningful sense.

The final point I want to make is that I was pleased to hear from both NTA and TII that they are keen to respond to our questions. They are particularly keen because we sent them a letter with 35 questions on 9 April in which we gave them until 23 April to respond. As they have not responded, I choose to be encouraged that we will be getting a response tomorrow. I would be even more encouraged if NTA and TII could commit to, within the next 48 hours, providing responses to the questions they have had since 9 April. We cannot write our submissions until we have some facts and at present, we do not have the facts we need to write our submissions.

We are grateful that they have sat down with us and have talked to us but we do not feel we have been given the information we need.