CIE last year sought to persuade the Government to reallocate Dublin's Luas light rail budget to alternative public transport facilities, including bus services in other cities, The Irish Times has learned.
In a letter to the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, last April, the CIE chairman, Mr Brian Joyce, said "the proposed financial allocations for Luas could be used much more effectively in solving the gridlock problem in Dublin and also in solving the public transport problems of regions outside Dublin".
In her reply, Ms O'Rourke said she found it "difficult to understand how your board can reconcile" this stance with its "concurrent advocacy" of the Luas project at the public inquiry, then in progress, into the planned light rail line from Sandyford to St Stephen's Green.
A copy of the Minister's letter was among 36 items of correspondence between CIE and her Department, released in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act. However, all but half of the first paragraph of Mr Joyce's three-page letter was blanked out.
The Department justified withholding the substance of the letter because it contained "commercially sensitive information" - a decision upheld last week by the FoI review board.
A full copy of the letter, seen by The Irish Times, starts by expressing concern that the cost of Luas could reach £700 million "at the very minimum" and then goes on to warn that it might even end up "near £1 billion" because of escalating property acquisition and other costs.
Less than a year earlier, in May 1998, the Minister told the Dail that it would cost £400 million-plus. Pressed on what she meant, she said: "Plus means extra."
In his April 1999 letter, Mr Joyce said CIE's board believed other measures "would offer a much better utilisation of resources", including a new fleet of high-capacity low-floored articulated buses, a rail link to Dublin Airport and new down-river rail link to bypass the Loop Line.
These would cost £200 million, £150 million and £100 million respectively. Most of the balance would go to new suburban rail rolling stock (£100 million), improved signalling and more track capacity at key points (£50 million) and 300 standard buses (£60 million). Outside Dublin, CIE believed up to £80 million was needed to "upgrade bus services in the four provincial cities and suburban rail services in the greater Cork area".
Mr Pat Mangan, assistant secretary at the Department, told the CIE group chief executive, Mr Michael McDonnell, it would be "interested to know the basis for CIE's conclusion that the proposed Luas financial allocation" could be used more effectively.
"What evaluation has CIE carried out to enable it to reach that conclusion? Does CIE have a clear and measured assessment as to the order of its overall investment priorities?" Mr Mangan asked in his three-page letter, of which all but one paragraph was blanked out.
In a six-page reply, dated June 17th, 1999, most of which was also blanked out on "commercially sensitive information and/or deliberative process of Dept", the full text seen by The Irish Times shows that Mr McDonnell persisted in arguing for a reallocation of the Luas funds.
"CIE management have not specifically costed alternative public transport options for the Luas alignments because the Government policy we are being asked to implement is Luas-specific," but he felt that a "value for money" articulated bus option should be considered.
Three months earlier, the Minister had made an order under the 1996 Dublin Light Rail Act approving line A, Tallaght-Middle Abbey Street. She made a similar order for line B (Sandy ford-St Stephen's Green) on September 14th, 1999.
