Mr. Hugh Creegan:

A good few things were mentioned regarding College Gate. We did a great deal of work on College Gate to see if we could avoid having to proceed with the proposal with which we went forward. The honest position is that the proposal with which we went forward previously is still the right one. None of the alternatives is satisfactory. They all have issues. We will put on the MetroLink website within a number of days a comprehensive report setting out all the options that were looked at and the issues with each. People will have the opportunity to review that. They will see that a lot of effort was made to determine how to avoid having to remove those apartments. Unfortunately, we have not been able to do that in this case. On the compulsory purchase order, CPO, system, it was stated that the normal process will not work correctly. We are sort of acknowledging that in what we have put forward. The idea of compensating tenants with up to one year's rent in another location is outside the CPO process and beyond what it normally requires. Rental tenants by their nature only have a fixed tenancy usually. We are going to go above and beyond that. For owner-occupiers, we will try to help them find alternative accommodation in a suitable location. As the Senator said, they are part of a community at this stage and, it is presumed, will be looking to be accommodated somewhere else in that community. We will do all we can to assist them. I agree completely that the normal compensation rules are not enough and we are going above and beyond that.

I will pick up some of the other things, including the streetscape issues. We are very conscious of that and have consulted people. Taking gardens is a significant issue which encompasses what a road will look like afterwards. We are appointing design teams for the project over the next month or so and all of them will include urban realm architects. We will make it a key focus of the project that we end up not only with the transport but a project that respects the character of the areas through which it runs.

I was asked about bus data and open source access. That is understood. When one looks at the open source data, the issue is the variability in the buses. We have not put out a single number and said that every bus journey takes a certain number of minutes. We have had to put out a notice to say journeys take up to a certain amount of time and we have not even gone to the extremes in that regard. The data we have used in our documentation come from the automatic vehicle location data from the buses themselves and we have access to all of that. The calculations that were done came from that system. It demonstrates, if nothing else, the vast variability in bus times. One day a journey takes a certain amount of time and the next day it takes a different amount of time. People find it hard to plan their journeys with confidence on that basis.

I was asked about the sterilisation of properties along the green line and the timescale for its upgrade. The proposals to upgrade the green line to metro will largely mirror the proposals we published last year. People will have seen what the impacts and changes will be. It might vary slightly, but that is the broad outline. As to timescale, we said in our documentation yesterday that we believe we can get the green line to function for up to 20 years, approximately. Close to that time period it will have to change, but we do not have any more detailed information on that yet. I was asked about the metro deviating in another direction towards the Rathfarnham area. Ms Graham has covered the impact on the strategy of making changes at this stage. As the Senator acknowledged, it would require significant development changes to make it slightly higher density.