Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

In regard to all the projects in Transport 21 which have started their processes, I have indicated on a number of occasions that I will bring them from planning and design to tender stage. As I outlined previously, all of them are continuing along that path. We will then make decisions in regard to provision of the money. Obviously, metro and the DART interconnector will take up a huge amount of the public transport budget over the next number of years given the current financial circumstances.

It was announced some time ago that line D will be post the work on the metro, although some of the work involved in that will be included when the metro work is being done.

On the procedure for the tenders, a railway order must be obtained for metro in order that people know the final routes and the costings and so on can be finalised. We will know which of the two tenderers were successful for some months after that.

I stand corrected but I believe the last meeting I had on arrangements for the big dig, as the Deputy referred to it, was approximately one week or ten days before Christmas.

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