Mr. Hugh Creegan:

To respond to Deputy Munster's queries, we are conscious that there has been a lot of the growth away from the centre, a large chunk of which has been on the western side of the city. I have to repeat what I said earlier.

We are putting a DART service on the Kildare line, which will be a phenomenal addition to all locations along that line, and I mentioned the Maynooth line, which is further north. Beyond that, we want to make improvements to the bus system and add capacity to it.

To move on to the green line connection, because we have recognised that the green line will need to be upgraded to metro in the future, the tunnel boring works we are doing now are being brought as far as is needed to make that connection at a point in the future without having to do more tunnel boring, and the connection in the future will be from the surface downwards. That is what the MetroLink scheme is lined up to achieve. Consideration of the flexibility to divert it to another location was the essence of the Deputy's question but the issue is what then happens to the green line. The green line will be over capacity at a point in the future so we need to upgrade it. The issue is what we would do if we were not going elsewhere. I will leave aside the fact that this is our transport strategy and we would be undermining it to point it in a different direction.

The timeline for residents moving out of College Gate will have to wait until An Bord Pleanála approves the scheme, if it approves it. There will certainly be a period of time after that, so I would guess we are talking of a period over three years and it could be five years, so the timeline is somewhere in that range.

The Deputy asked about the timeline for purchasing trams for the metro system. The orders will probably be placed about halfway through the construction period. They will need about four years advance ordering at least, so I imagine it will be 2022 or 2023 when the orders are placed for that. It would not affect the placement of orders for the heavy rail fleet. As I said, the tender process to procure DART fleet that will go onto the northern line, the Kildare line and the Maynooth line will kick off next month, so the metro trams will not interfere with that process.