CIE's French consultants for the Luas project in Dublin, whose advice against putting it underground in the city centre was rejected by the Government, have won the contract for a £550 million light rail system in the Portuguese city of Oporto.
Semaly, which is based in Lyons, will design and manage the Oporto scheme, which will run to a total length of 70km - more than double what is planned for Dublin - of which 50km uses existing track, with 20km of new line.
The system will have one eight-kilometre tunnel, with 10 underground stations, as well as three viaducts. A total of 72 trams are being built by ABB, the major civil engineering firm which also built distinctive trams for the French city of Strasbourg.
Semaly has been advising CIE on the design of the £220 million Luas project for the past three years.
Last year, in a report on the feasibility of running it underground in the city centre, the consultants said this would cost an additional £300 million.
Because the report had been commissioned by CIE, it was dismissed by opponents of the proposed on-street light rail system, who insisted that a more "objective" report should be done. This is now being carried out by a firm of British consultants, W.S. Atkins.
The Atkins report, ordered by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, must be finished by April if Ireland is to have any chance of receiving the £100 million in EU aid earmarked for the project, which was originally approved in 1994.
Last November the European Commissioner for Regional Affairs, Ms Monika Wulf-Mathies, made it clear that there could be no commitment to provide EU funding to put Luas underground in the city centre as there would not be enough time to redesign the project.
It is widely expected that the Atkins report will say that it would be feasible to put Luas underground within the canal ring, but at an extra cost running to several times the existing budget and with a level of disruption similar to the installation of an on-street system.
