Seanad debates
Wednesday, 5 November 2003
National Development Plan Mid-Term Evaluation: Statements.
The authors of the review draw attention to the impact this approach has had on what the Leader and Senator Higgins referred to and what I am tempted to call the ill-fated Luas project. It appears to have encountered many more problems than appeared would be the case when it started. They tell the story, which would be quite amusing if it was not so tragic, of how the project started as one thing at one price in 1993 and then went through a succession of changes as the years wore on. What all these changes had in common was that they greatly added to the bottom-line cost of the project. We have ended up with a still-unfinished light rail system that will cost at least three times its original projected cost.
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