Mr. Tom O'Mahony:

The Government periodically publishes the priorities for the capital investment framework for a four or five-year period. Previous Governments have done the same. It was always the case, before the financial crisis hit, that it was envisaged that with the completion of the major interurban motorway network we would come to the end of a period of massive investment in improving our road infrastructure and we were planning to move on to a very substantial investment in improving our public transport infrastructure, with the construction of a DART underground and so on being important parts of that strategy. At present, most of that proposal is on hold, a limited amount of work is being done, in particular on the Luas cross city but the funding is not available for public transport investment on the scale that was envisaged. However, the projects are not cancelled and the Ministers have made clear that projects have been put on hold. The expectation would be that as we get into the phase in which the economy has recovered and there is money available for investment, public transport, particularly in Dublin, will need to be substantially improved. It would be a matter for Government to agree that and then it would be a matter for the new entity to work with whatever resources it was given to do the parts for which it was responsible.