Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

If Deputy Rabbitte would like me to give all the details of the plan in two or three minutes, he knows I cannot do so. We outlined the details yesterday. I repeat the point that the Department of Transport in the work leading up to the plan with all the relevant agencies looked in detail at the proposals we believed it would be necessary to deal with as a priority. We did this on every single project. As I said, it would be commercial nonsense to indicate the exact figure on costs for every project. However, the Department and the relevant agencies, based on what they have been doing for a number of years, have built up what they require to undertake this plan.

Now that we have clearance on the precise elements of the plan, all the necessary detailed planning and development work as well as the implementation of the constituent programmes will have to move ahead in the timeframes outlined. The Department will establish a monitoring group under its chairmanship for the purpose of overseeing the implementation of what is a very elaborate plan to bring the infrastructure of this country up to scale. It obviously irks people that we have done this.

The work was done not by politicians but by the best engineers available to us who, day in day out, are delivering successfully, whether it is the rail safety plan, the opening of Luas or the construction of the port tunnel, a hugely successful operation and only the second tunnel of its kind in Ireland. I have already given the figures on buses, rail——

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