Mr. Hugh Creegan:

The booking time has been reduced to four hours, but at present the fleet requires ramp access on the DART service and that requires attendance by somebody to make that happen. In the case of the new DART fleet that is going to be purchased, and we will be purchasing a great deal of new DART fleet, a lot of effort has gone into seeing how we can minimise that platform-to-train interface and how we can make that work more successfully. That contract still has not been awarded so I am not in a position to be able to say what the solution that is emerging is, but I can confirm that a major focus of the tender process was to try to improve that. However, if in the layout we have of some of the rail network where stations are built on curves, such as Tara Street station, there is a limit to what can be achieved, and it is very challenging. If all our stations had lovely neat straight lines and all the platforms were the same height, it would be a great deal easier for us to make the transition. Unfortunately, that is not the case.