Mr. Richard Logue:

I will be honest as I have been monitoring the whole situation with MetroLink and I shake my head in disbelief at how long the whole process is taking. One would expect, if one had an uncontentious application and it was going through the normal planning process - the railway order as we know is a separate planning process from the normal planning process for local authorities, An Bord Pleanála etc. - it should take two to three years because one still has to produce a cost, get approval, raise funding from EU or other sources and all of that takes time. One has to build a business case and to make a feasibility study, so one could be allowing for a further two to three years. I know that my friend and colleague, Mr. Hassard Stacpoole, is on the call as well and I ask him to feel free if he wants to jump in to answer this question also. I estimate that it would be a timescale of around about five years if the decision was made to go ahead.