Mr. Jim Meade:

We signed up to a framework in 2021 for 750 battery electric cars. We called off the first 95 of those cars in 2021. The first of those trains arrives at the end of this month. There is a very long and onerous commissioning process. We are heavily regulated so it will take until January 2026 before they go into service. By January 2026 we will have somewhere between eight and 12 of those train sets ready to go. They will all go in together. They will go on the northern road. We have put the charging capacity into Drogheda. They will work under the wires to Malahide and then under battery power from there to Drogheda. That will allow us to cascade some of the diesel trains that are on that onto the Maynooth and Kildare lines and ultimately onto the intercity routes. All 19 of those train sets from the first order will be delivered during 2026 and go into service. Once we get that first train set properly certified and commissioned ahead of series, the rest will come off very quickly. All of the original 19 trains should be in service by mid to late 2026 and then we will go straight into the second order, which we placed the following year.

They will start to be delivered back to back, which is another 18 train sets. They will all come on board through 2026 and into early 2027. They will be for the greater Dublin area but they will also allow us to cascade out to the intercity routes and the Maynooth and Kildare lines.