Mr. T.J. Malone:

We have had lengthy discussions with Irish Rail and CIE over the past number of months. We have been working with them for the past six or eight months.

As the Deputy quite rightly said, where we are crossing a live railway, safety is paramount, as is making sure we and our contractors take all of this into account. CIÉ must have the appropriate oversight from an engineering point of view to make sure when awarding a licence that everything is very clear and that all of the criteria and documentation needed are there and accounted for at the time.

We have been working with CIÉ over the past months to make sure we can put in place a master agreement. The Deputy must understand this is a project that has never been seen before. The terms and conditions CIÉ may have had with other operators in the past and which may have worked will not work for a project of this scale and this size. We have been working extensively with CIÉ in recent months to try to get our service level agreements and that we get the proper documentation put in place when we apply for licences on how it would work and how CIÉ could work at speed with us. We are glad to say we are finally in a position whereby both parties are happy and in the past week we have reached an agreement. It will be signed and put in place in the coming days and we will then start crossing CIÉ lines.