Mr. Hugh Creegan:

I will start with Deputy Rock who raised a number of queries. TII has had a number of discussions with Dublin City Council about Northwood Station and Ballymun Kickhams. We are pretty certain we have a solution that will prove satisfactory to Ballymun Kickhams. I do not know how directly it has been involved in the discussions, but we are pretty confident its concerns will be adequately addressed and do not envisage a problem in that regard.

The intervention shaft in Albert College Park is a considerable construction but much smaller than a station. I cannot say whether we will interfere with any pitch on a temporary basis. If we do, I am pretty confident we can sort the matter out with Dublin City Council to find a temporary replacement for a short period. It is much smaller than a full station.

On whether we are disappointed to lose the southern section of the green line, we have taken the right approach. The green line will need to be upgraded in the future. That matter came up in a later question from another member. We are not upgrading the green line just to Ranelagh. It is to extemd to places south of Ranelagh. Cherrywood is a town. Sandyford is growing and there is an extension to Bray. The line will have to be upgraded to metro standard to cater for future transport demand, but it does not need to be done now and we can definitely eke more out of the green line in the meantime. We think it is the appropriate solution at this stage as it will allow us to proceed with the project.

Between the NTA and TII, we have limited resources. Therefore, as soon as we are able to free some of the resources in working on the other projects to which we have committed, we will assign the design team to the Finglas Luas project and start the design work. That is part of the strategy. It will take some time to do it, but work will start later this year.

On whether it is necessary for St. Mobhi Road to be used as a bus corridor, given MetroLink, it is still a busy bus corridor. MetroLink serves a lot of key destinations, but as members know from looking at the maps, there is a quite a distance between stations and there are many side roads and other locations that need to be served. The bus system will still be really important in the area. For that reason, we believe we need to proceed with the BusConnects project.