Mr. Paul Moran:

Regarding obtaining planning approval from An Bord Pleanála, we made the application in 2012 and got approval in 2013. Getting that was a hurdle. Unfortunately, we had two lean years and we were waiting until the end of 2015 before a programme was announced in which Dunkettle was included. We got going straight away by appointing consultants and thinking about the strategy that would be necessary to deliver this with the minimum disruption. The objective here is minimum disruption to Cork, to deal with vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians and to try to get it done as efficiently as possible. In terms of developing the strategy to use the NEC, we went back to the Office of Government Procurement, OGP, and the Government contracts committee, GCC, to talk to them about a derogation because we needed that to deviate from the public works contract. We went out to the market. The first thing we did was invite in all the contractors and ask them what they thought. We told them we had this problem and asked what they thought was the best way of dealing with it. That was invaluable because we got a very good idea of what the hurdles would be as we proceeded through procurement to get stage 2 up and running.

Communications have been foremost in our minds because of the number of people who go through it and the delays it causes. The communication groups are utilising the chambers of commerce and developing a dedicated traffic application that will give users a visual idea of the delay there and, hopefully, help users perhaps change the times they leave or go to work, if that is possible. We are also launching a traffic website to help people understand. Once we start building this, there will be three years of construction. There is all of that along with the work that has been done in the last 12 months. We should talk about that further. Stage 1 has allowed us to de-risk it, as I mentioned, and to do many enabling works. The public has seen the yellow jackets there for diversions, getting rid of the archaeology and the resolution that is needed there and dealing with some of the environmental constraints, rather than leaving it for construction. A huge amount has been done from that point of view to date.