Mr. Hugh Creegan:

Yes, which is not an attractive way to route the traffic. With regard to where the project sits now, a feasibility study was done by Transport Infrastructure Ireland and we were involved with that some three years ago. I had thought it was 12 routes that were identified as possibilities, but perhaps the Senator is correct that it is 11. The project has not gone any further yet. At a point in time, if this strategy is adopted, the project needs to be developed as a stand-alone project. It needs to evaluate all of those options and maybe others. It needs to consider all of the things the Senator has mentioned such as environmental impacts, the impacts on the various parks and so on. I have heard from lots of the people out there about some of the options. Out of that, it has to come up with a preferred option as part of the project itself. That is the project as opposed to the strategy. As of now, nothing is currently happening on it. I believe it should happen in the next year or two, but nothing is currently happening. It would need to be done in conjunction with South Dublin County Council and Fingal County Council. I believe that some of the options go out into Kildare also so a number of local authorities will be involved in it. That is the status now. The feasibility study was done a number of years ago, there is a statement in the transport strategy, and currently nothing else is happening on it, to the best of my knowledge.

I will jump now to the greater Dublin area cycle network. We got plenty of feedback on the cycle network. It is fair to say that we had errors in our network. We had not brought in some of the key things from the previous version of the network that we had. That is being corrected now. I do not recall what it is we have done on the Liffey Valley greenway. I am not sure, but I believe we have actually revisited that and put back in things that we had planned previously. We certainly got plenty of feedback and, hands up, we had some of the details wrong. The final network will be much more comprehensive and will pick up a lot of the faults that people have identified.

On the DART+ West and Ashtown Stables, I am reluctant to go too deep into that here because it is Irish Rail that is running the project. We are very familiar with this and very aware of the issues. A lot of effort was put into the final option that came forward to try to mitigate the impacts on Ashtown Stables. It does affect another property there, as members may be aware. The drawings, maps and various brochures that are produced are accurate drawings of the routes. I do not know what was issued on the day before. It may have been that the actual engineering drawings were issued. I would be highly surprised if they were any different from the drawings that were published, and I do not believe they were. Obviously, they would provide more detail about the exact measurements. I am speculating that this is what was issued. The norm would be to issue a simpler version of the drawings. Most people do not want to get a bundle of engineering drawings to deal with. They receive a much simpler version of the drawings so that people can understand the impact. In my view, a lot of effort was made to mitigate the impact on Ashtown Stables. I understand that they are not happy with it. The feedback is now being reviewed by Irish Rail and final decisions still have to be made on it.