Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There have been developments that give some signs of encouragement. The Planning and Development Act is designed– I hope it does not get caught in the judicial review process to the same extent – to streamline the process. There have been positive developments recently, such as the decision to establish and create judges for the environmental court. We are starting to see some decisions fairly quickly. I think it is the uncertainty. I could list a number of other cases where it could be two or three years. There is no real clarity as to why it takes so long and it is a very expensive process. We need to focus on that.

On the metro, we kid ourselves a lot that we cannot build infrastructure but we can. We are quite good as a State. We built a motorway network on time at a relatively low cost by European standards. We also built the Luas lines pretty much on budget and on time. It was difficult, but there was good engineering. This Government rolled out the national broadband plan, which is not a small engineering feat. The plan has been hugely successful and was done on budget and on time. I could go on. Other countries are looking to copy what we are doing in the context of retrofitting. We can and will do it. Dr. Sweeney and colleagues will say, “Get this done quickly and get a good price”. One of the biggest constraints to which I keep going back is the financial provision. It will be a very expensive project. The more we can keep the cost of that down, the more we can fund other projects which we need to do in Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick. Time is one aspect.

The way to do that is to give real certainty to those developing and bidding that this is well planned, which it is, resource the bidding process and make sure there are people with Dr. Sweeney on the State side who know this business inside out. That helps to bring down the cost. It often revolves around resourcing the planning and the State side when dealing with other operators because that de-risks their bid process, which brings down the cost. They will bid competitively, and several serious players will bid. Getting that aspect right is why the appointment of this person to head the office and the staff to support him is important. Metros have been rolled out in Paris, Copenhagen and cities similar to Dublin on a regular basis. It is not new technology. It is standard kit.

The more we scale up our resources on the State side of that bid process, which is what we are doing and we need to do more, the more the price will come down and the time as well. It is not just about time. It is also about getting as good value for money as we can.