Mr. Jim Meade:

No, we had reasonable confidence that it would work. Do not forget, we have Belfast trains running today on the pre-August timetable. We have had Belfast trains at the peak times. We were trying to get more capacity into the peak for everybody and then move to an hourly pattern because if you can get the pattern right in one hour it just keeps repeating itself throughout the day whether it is commuter, DART commuter, outer commuter or, indeed, the Enterprise services. It was always on our agenda to put it in. We recognise, as I said earlier, that we tightened it and took some resilience out of the timetable. Because we have a train every couple of minutes coming through Connolly the domino effect was significant. However, it has always been on our agenda. Adding to the service, as we have done with other services, has been on our agenda for some time. The northern commuter service has grown over the years, as have services to Maynooth. In the previous timetable we brought it to a half-hourly service. We have increased the cross-city services over the years. It was always on our agenda to bring in the hourly service. It was a timing issue. One of the things we recognised some years ago was that the opening of Belfast Grand Central Station, a completely new station on a greenfield site, was key to delivering that.