Mr. Aebhric McGibney:

To be clear, it is not our intention to have a city centre-centric focus. The OECD looks at cities and Dublin and Cork are the only two cities it looks at in Ireland. My wife is from Cork so I think I am allowed to say that. The OECD looks at functional areas and that is the way it should be. Ideally, a directly-elected mayor could deal with the challenges, for example, when community and commuters hit off each about bus lanes or whatever, and if a mayor fails in that duty then he or she will not get re-elected.

To go back to when metro north, not MetroLink, was proposed, I remember that the cost of car parks that might be needed in order to prevent some of the cars coming into the city, when the DART underground and metro north were going to be built at the same time, would hit in Fingal but the benefit would occur in the Dublin City Council area. Sometimes then, it must be decided who will bear the cost and how that is to be resolved. There are plenty of those issues where a means needs to be resolved. There is lots of co-operation in many areas but somewhere there needs to be someone who can say, "This is how we are going to do it.".