Mr. Peter Strachan:

On Galway and very light rail, we are currently looking at a BusConnects equivalent in terms of what the active and sustainable travel opportunities in Galway might give us. I am very happy to take away and discuss with the executive and board any view of whether there is merit in running a feasibility study or otherwise for very light rail. My caution, when people start to talk about light rail and then very light rail, and I have done it myself, is that we believe there is a much more cost-effective solution than doing that. My experience of light rail schemes is that they end up costing a significant amount of money, if we are not particularly careful. There are often better ways of deploying those resources, particularly into a better bus service, which can deliver more for more people in the locality compared with the narrow corridors of a light rail or very light rail scheme. However, I am more than happy to go away and discuss that with our executive colleagues and come back to the Senator on it, if that is all right.

I absolutely agree about the Luas green line. I interchanged just this morning off the red line to the green line. Even quite early in the morning, the volume on the green line was noticeably higher than on the red line. Given the development that the Senator rightly referred to, we need to have a look at that. We are coming up to a position of looking at the contractual delivery position for the Luas. We are also debating whether there is a rolling stock issue to be dealt with as regards the age and reliability of the current Citadis fleet. All those things need to be considered in the round. To go back to the Chairperson's question about what we know about it, the Luas is one of these things where we have all looked at it and said, "Wow, what a success story that is", but let us make sure that it does not become an over-success with overcrowding, and that we respond to the development on the Luas corridor. I am happy to take that away and have a look at it.