Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Public Accounts Committee

2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 31 - Transport, Tourism and Sport

9:00 am

Mr. Graham Doyle:

Some of the work that was done previously will have a value in terms of that project. A lot of the work was done a number of years ago. The DART expansion programme, as we prefer to call it, rather than the DART underground project, based on what we see already, has a positive cost-benefit analysis. We believe that it has the potential to make significant changes in public transport in Dublin. We are very supportive of the project but it is a megaproject in the context of Ireland's economy. It is of a magnitude that it just was not possible to consider in the timeframe of the existing capital plan but for us it is a project that we will be pushing strongly at the centre to try to bring about. Work was done a number of years ago on the project in very different economic times. It is the expectation that some of that work can be re-used and, unfortunately, some of it will not be.