Tom Morrissey (Progressive Democrats)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Deputy Callely, to the House.

I have raised this issue on a number of occasions over the past two or three years. On 21 October last, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Cullen, on taking office said that the height of the port tunnel would not change and that this decision had been taken primarily on safety grounds. As a result of the controversy and the public debate on this matter the previous Minister, Deputy Brennan, had appointed a consultant named Atkins to advise him. What surprises me is that the Minister's decision was taken primarily on safety grounds as well as cost considerations.

However, the Atkins report appears to be at variance with many of the reasons given by the Minister. For example the National Roads Authority's advice to the Minister was:

Reducing the lane width from 3.65 m to 3.5 m would constitute less overall tunnel safety, in the context of the tunnel carrying a very high % of HGVs, including fuel tankers and other hazardous cargoes; and it is intuitively apparent that wider traffic lanes offer greater vehicle separation than narrower lanes and, therefore, greater safety.

However, Atkins said a 3.5 m lane was "fully justified and will not compromise safety". He said an increase of the width of traffic lanes over 3.5 m did not increase tunnel capacity or improve safety. That is completely at variance with what the NRA advised the Minister. The current Irish national standard is 3.5 m in tunnels and that is the standard used throughout Europe and the rest of the world. An EU directive on safety in road tunnels of the trans-European road network, September 2003, requires no additional lane width over 3.5 m for heavy goods vehicles to be taken to enhance safety on the basis of a risk analysis.

The Minister was advised to change the lane width from 3.65 m to 3.5 m. Any formal adjudication requires revised planning procedures and is a matter for An Bord Pleanála. Environmental impact statements and An Bord Pleanála approvals are based on preliminary designs where lane width details and bridge height are not issues other than that they must be to standard. An Bord Pleanála has never commented on the height of standard bridges and this is supported by its recent decision on Limerick's Shannon tunnel crossing where the planning board confirmed that its decision excluded height considerations on the grounds that this was a national policy issue.

The NRA advised the Minister that to increase the height amounted to a radical change in the middle of the contract and said the scale of the works was to increase the headroom. However, Atkins said the scale of the works to increase the maintained headroom was low to moderate.

Atkins recommended:

The process of considering initiatives to increase the maintained headroom of the DPT has shown that space is available in the tunnel to accommodate an increase in the maintained headroom and that the scale of the civil and mechanical engineering works required to implement it are low to moderate. On a purely technical basis, a recommendation to raise the maintained headroom to either 4.75 m or 4.90 m could be made, that would accommodate up to 79% or 100% respectively of the HGV trailers that would be affected by the current maintained headroom limit. In the latter case, this would allow for 'supercube' trailers to use the DPT.

The NRA advised the Minister that the prevailing movement across the world was towards controlling the maximum height of vehicles, primarily on safety grounds, and that evidence of the need for such a limit was reinforced by the many bridge strikes which occur each year, with significant cost and safety implications.

This evidence is at odds with the Atkins report. The report stated that in 1999, the UK introduced a 5.03 m maintained headroom for the design of road tunnels. Promoting high-clearance vehicles has been official policy of the UK's Department of Transport since 1998. Its strategy document entitled Towards Sustainable Distribution, contains a strong endorsement of promoting high-clearance vehicles.

The NRA advised the Minister that there is no factual basis for the assertion made that to increase the height does not involve very substantial additional cost and time. The Atkins report stated that the construction of the modified verge and drainage is likely to be very similar to the existing ones and that no significant additional cost or time should be attributed to them. It also stated that the cost implications associated with the modification can be categorised as low and that it contains design and construction implications that are relatively minor. By reducing the internal diameter of the lane widths to 3.5 m, the road space in the tunnel is reduced by 3,000 sq. m. That is a total reduction of 4% in the overall road space. That actually reduces costs.

The Dublin Port tunnel is a strategic link in our transport infrastructure. Up to 60% of this country's exports leave through Dublin Port. The NRA claimed that there was no reason to increase the height of the tunnel because we would be making allowances for vehicles that are not on our national road network. The opposite is the case as such vehicles are on our road network. The motorway bridges in this country are 5.3 m high. The new Luas bridge in Dundrum is 5.5 m high. At the recent public inquiry into the upgrade of the M50, it was decided that two new tunnels were to be built at the Castleknock/Blanchardstown interchange. Those two tunnels are 5.3 m high. The port tunnel will be 4.65 m high. Something is wrong.

The large trucks for which this tunnel was meant to cater will still be on our streets. The idea of a HGV ban cannot now happen. The ridiculous situation will arise where the biggest trucks will be on our streets and the smaller trucks will be in the tunnel. From an economic point of view, this is completely baffling. We have been losing manufacturing jobs in this country on a weekly basis for the past few years. We are now becoming a nation of distributors. How do all the goods from our big companies leave the country? The answer is that they leave on supercubes. While the debate on this issue has been about supercubes, it should have been about the goods that are in those trucks and on the jobs in this country that depend on the goods in those trucks getting to foreign markets at competitive prices. It is ridiculous that we will have two vehicles on the road instead of one. I do not know why there was an Atkins report if the Minister states "intuitively" that wider lanes are safer than narrower lanes. A mistake has been made and we will live to regret it if this is not examined.

The final irony is that the company constructing the tunnel sought an alternative on how to do this. It was told that it was not employed to do that and that it should do what it was contracted to do. The fact that the company was told not to bother is referred to in the Atkins report. The whole purpose of the tunnel was to get trucks off our streets, but that is not what will happen. If we are to have a HGV ban in the city of Dublin, I would like to know how it will happen. I appeal to the Minister to look at this again. The NRA has seriously misled the Minister.