Dublin City Council is to make a second attempt to erect the controversial orbital road signs around the city.
The colour-coded signs which directed people around "inner" and "outer" routes were erected on August 26th last, but they were removed almost as quickly after the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, raised concerns about their complexity.
His department was also unhappy with the lack of consultation.
Yesterday, Dublin City Council's director of traffic, Mr Owen Keegan, said preparation of the new signs was at an advanced stage and he expected they would be erected in February.
The new signs addressed the issues of concern raised by the Department of Transport, Mr Keegan said.
The use of the colour orange in the original signs was inappropriate, he said, as this was the colour traditionally used for road works. The absence of the English language translation for "An Lár" - city centre - was also addressed, he said.
The use of numbered junctions instead of place names had been heavily criticised but Mr Keegan said there was not enough space on the signs to contain this information. Additional signs along the orbital route would carry some of this information, he said.
Some people would say the signs looked the same as the old signs while others would see differences. "All will be revealed in due course," Mr Keegan said.
A spokesman for the Department of Transport said Dublin City Council had worked closely with the Department on the issue. The Department understood the difficulty in including detailed information while keeping the signs clear and understandable, the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO) withheld funding for the original orbital signs project because of its unhappiness with the scheme.
The DTO co-ordinates the implementation of the transport strategy for the greater Dublin area and comes under the aegis of the Department of Transport. It approved the payment of £44,000 to the City Council for consultancy fees incurred by the project in 2001 but informed the council in June 2002 that there would be no more funding for the project because it was "not acceptable".
According to documentation released under the Freedom of Information Act, the DTO had "protracted difficulties" in getting information from the council on the project.
In a letter to a senior Department of Transport official, just after Dublin City Council launched the plan, the DTO's chief executive, Mr John Henry, warned that the project was being implemented without DTO approval.
He pointed out his office told the council on June 7th, 2002, that the project was "in clear breach of grant conditions".
"It came as a surprise to the DTO that this signage scheme was launched this week by Dublin City as the DTO had recently reiterated the view that the scheme was not acceptable," Mr Henry wrote.
While the Minister for Transport was believed to be very unhappy with the signage project, a Freedom of Information request uncovered no written records of Mr Brennan conveying his unhappiness to Dublin City Council.
