Mr. Cathal Masterson:

It is a fair question. There is a design capacity on the road, and we are starting to reach that design capacity, particularly at peak periods. Currently, we are introducing variable speed limit technology that will make that flow more reliable by trying reduce the number of breakdowns and incidents by calming down the flow. That will only get us so far. It is our prediction that over the next couple of years if traffic continues to rise that the flow will break down much more continuously over time and we will be in a situation whereby – and this benefits the congestion that Deputy Verona Murphy had spoken about – that will become problematic for the country and for the greater Dublin area as a whole.

We have been looking at the various ways in which we might deal with that since 2014. We were required, to be fair to An Bord Pleanála, to look at that as part of the demand management scheme and we have done that. That involves considering how best we might manage that demand, including through pricing, although that is not a particularly popular measure. We have realised that the current toll has an impact, but it is quite blunt because it is located at one point at the crossing for historical reasons. Ideally, we would like to develop a scheme in discussions with the NTA around modelling something that could ensure that the capacity of the corridor is protected going forward for at least the next ten, 15 or 20 years. This will be so that we will not be in a situation anymore around expanding the network which we may have been in before, and this goes back to the Deputy’s point on climate action. We have done basic modelling on it. It is sticky because the demand on it now to be served by public transport is tricky enough. We have been doing more work on that to try to get a better sense of what types of trips are being made by what types of users and when these are occurring. We would like to do more of that.