Mr. Jim Meade:

The Barrow Bridge was struck not once but twice by two ships over a short period. We had CCTV on the bridge so were able to identify both ships and their insurers. We have put the insurers on notice and are working through that process with them. They are waiting for us to come back with the costings and the breakdown of them. There was a lot of work to be done. Working in the river and in a marine area, there were certain things we had to do. We had to procure specialist consultants and do topographical and barometric surveys. We needed to do some ground investigations. We had an archaeological survey to do, even though it is there a long time. We have some preliminary design works. All of that has been moving along as per plan. We detailed a plan before. The works and timelines we committed to originally to some of the Deputy's colleagues have been substantially completed. We are working up the designs and costings to go back to the insurers to get the costings out of them. As part of that, we will not be getting this from insurers but we want to automate it because it is a manual operation today. When we bring it back into service, it will probably be controlled from the NTCC, which will be a significant improvement.

There is a plan to bring back the south Wexford line, as we call it. We are looking at how to bring it back into service. There is a plan to bring it back in the all-Ireland strategic rail review. We will be working to the timeline in that. We do not have a date pegged in the ground yet as to when it goes back into service but it is intended the bridge will be ready for when the line goes back into service.