Mr. Shane Conneely:

They are difficult conversations. We do not shy away from them. We have been trying to lead and that means getting people to follow us in this. Much like the local authorities are 31 independent states, we have 39 independent organisations with a grassroots membership. We cannot issue an edict dictating what approach they take.

What we have been doing is shaping their decision-making. Often it is very hard in certain areas where there has been a commitment to a particular project for ten to 15 years which has been delayed repeatedly. A lot of personal credibility gets tied up in these things.

As things move forward, we will see less of it because individual chambers are not championing the same kinds of projects to the same degree as they used to. There are a certain number of legacy ones and they are difficult. They make for uncomfortable conversations within our network. However, we have been reshaping our discussions from things like motorways to talking about transport corridors. The kind of work that we have been doing on trains in recent years is completely different from what we would have been doing ten years or more ago.

This is part of a wider societal issue. Obviously I cannot name anybody but I have sat down with individual board members and individual business members of chambers around the country who think a particular ring-road will be the one that will solve all of their problems. Realistically, those projects cost several hundred million euro more than you think they will cost and when they are brought in, you could have probably had a light rail system for the same price.