Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The first point was about increased spending on the running of the public transport agencies. It is just a matter of staff. There is increased activity in these agencies. It is a matter of taking on new staff. It is nothing more or less than that. The agencies need the right number of staff and extra resources in order to take on the projects. Delivering the national development plan demands many more skills and many more people. That is what the increased spending is about.

Deputy Troy also referred to steady state. Safety is always prioritised in spending on rail. Maintaining a steady state did fall behind. This meant that non-priority issues had to be deferred. Deputy Troy has returned; I am just getting to his stuff. We were not in a position to do as much track relaying or ballast cleaning as we had hoped. Now that rail is in a steady state, we are going ahead with many other purchases and with spending and investment. Transport Infrastructure Ireland will reach a steady-state situation in the context of national roads in 2021. On regional and local roads, steady state should be achieved by 2023.

I will deal with the rail fleet before dealing with retrofitting for accessibility. The NTA recently advertised for 60 to 80 second-hand rail carriages, either for lease or purchase, for delivery by February 2020. The NTA and Iarnród Éireann are also exploring options to place an order for additional intermediate carriages for the existing rail fleet, for delivery by the middle of 2021. This would boost capacity on medium-distance commuter lines in the greater Dublin area in particular.

On the A5 project, the Deputy has asked whether we knew about the issue in advance and, if so, whether provision had been made in respect of it. We knew that there might be a deferral or something of that nature, but we were in no way aware of the extent of what would be involved. It was considered prudent to provide for it in the budget last October. As it turned out, a certain amount was available, which was lucky. It would have been very imprudent not to provide for it because the money could still have had to be spent this year.

Core challenges have meant that it was postponed.

On retrofitting, accessibility features such as wheelchair access and audiovisual aids are built into all new public transport infrastructure projects and vehicles from the design stage. All new buses purchased by Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann for urban centres are low-floor, wheelchair accessible vehicles. Grant support for the introduction in the taxi fleet of more wheelchair accessible vehicles is available. There is a retrofit accessibility capital allocation of €7 million for 2019. With regard to rail, we fund an ongoing programme to upgrade existing older infrastructure and facilities, including train stations, to make them accessible to wheelchair users. This retrofit programme is managed by the NTA. Some €3 million was provided for rail station accessibility upgrades for 2019. This funding is triple the previous allocation for accessibility.

Irish Rail has two wheelchair accessible platforms at 118 stations and one wheelchair accessible platform at 26 stations. Work remains to be done to retrofit older infrastructural facilities, for example, Victorian era train stations, to make them accessible for people with disabilities. Making all stations fully accessible in addition to being wheelchair accessible would include ticketing and audio and visual information systems. An accessibility audit for Irish Rail in 2014 identified 54 stations then requiring upgrades to make them fully accessible at a cost of €79 million. The company has since undertaken some works at all 54 stations, as well as accessibility works at other stations across the network. However, Irish Rail would need to complete a new feasibility study to ascertain the cost of providing full accessibility at all stations across the network. I anticipate people will say that full accessibility has not yet been achieved. That is our objective, however, and we have made significant strides in that regard. We have increased funding and we are committed to this programme and achieving full accessibility eventually. While we have made significant progress, I acknowledge that it is definitely not enough and there is further to go.

I am happy to tell the committee all I know about MetroLink. It has been an issue for a long time in the Dáil and other fora. There has been much speculation about the project on which many people have lobbied and for which there have been various plans. The NTA will come forward with a new plan in two or three weeks. Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, will produce a new plan, having taken into consideration much of the ongoing public consultation. I met the NTA a couple of weeks ago and I met the TII in the same week. They gave me an outline of the possible implications of certain options. They have not made a decision. One option in the outline was for very long closures for metro south, on the green line, which were unacceptable. In one case, part of the line could have been closed for four years. That would be substituted by alternatives which I did not regard as satisfactory, including buses taking people from to and from the points of closure. I made it clear to both agencies that closures of this duration or of a much shorter duration were unacceptable and would cause gridlock in the area in question. They agreed to come back with a more concrete plan but left with no doubt that we would not allow lengthy closures. That is the current position and we expect the NTA and TII to come back with a proposal in the coming weeks. The date mentioned was, I believe, 20 March but members should not hold me to that. That is the position and I think we will make progress on the issue. Many public consultations are taking place on all aspects of MetroLink. The committee will find that decisions have to be made shortly. What I can say definitively is that if undue closures are proposed, the plan will not be acceptable. However, I do not expect that to happen.