John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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38. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the number of meetings he has had regarding the Luas cross city project; the dates of the meetings; the person or bodies with which he has met regarding the project and the disruption arising from its introduction; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16272/18]

Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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Since becoming Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, I chaired two meetings of the Luas Cross City Project Group on 24 October 2016 and 12 June 2017. This was a group established some years earlier to bring together the relevant State agencies and business groups with a view to ensuring that Dublin city centre remained "open for business" during the construction phase of the project.

The meetings I chaired involved representatives of the various stakeholders: the National Transport Authority (NTA), Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), Dublin City Council, Dublin Bus, An Garda Síochána, Retail Excellence, Dublin Chamber and Dublin Town. Construction of the project finished last year, and the new Luas Cross City was opened in December 2017 and growth in passenger journeys on the Green Line has grown by 28% since then.

On 15 March this year, I held a meeting with the organisations who are involved in delivering and enabling the Luas services: the NTA, TII, the tram operator Transdev, and the tram manufacturer Alstom. Our meeting discussed the electrical fault that had recently come to light involving the newly-commissioned 55-metre trams, the level of availability of trams on the Green Line, and the need to resolve the difficulties, increase peak-time passenger capacity, improve services, and restore passenger confidence in the Luas. The organisations outlined the approaches that they were following to address the problems and the mitigating actions that they would pursue in order to increase the passenger capacity especially at the times of peak demand.

I ensured that, following this meeting, the NTA maintained frequent contact with my Department in order to keep us specifically informed of the progress being made by the State agencies, the operator and the manufacturer in implementing the relevant actions to which they had committed themselves. I am pleased to say that the progress updates are now positive, and that the NTA has reassured us that the situation is much improved with the Luas Green Line performing well in more recent weeks. The full complement of trams to run the current timetable has been made available to Transdev, and the electrical fault in the new longer 55m trams has been diagnosed. Three of these longer 55m trams are now in use for passenger services and the remaining four are being delivered and commissioned.

The NTA and TII are working with all relevant parties who expect that by the end of May, all 7 of the new, longer trams will have been progressively brought into use, thus further enhancing capacity and service levels. Shortly after that, they intend to introduce a new timetable in order to make optimum use of the full, expanded fleet. That new timetable should further improve passenger services across both the Green Line and the Red Line.