In an attempt to remove any doubts about the Luas light rail project, the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, has given a "firm, unequivocal commitment" that the Luas will go ahead, whether on-street or underground in the city-centre.
Addressing a breakfast meeting of South Dublin Chamber of Commerce in Tallaght yesterday she said this was a Government commitment which had been repeated on several occasions in response to fears that the Luas project was dead.
The chamber is seeking an assurance that the Government will put an alternative public transport system in place if Luas is postponed. It has calculated that traffic congestion is costing the 3,500 firms in south Dublin at least £150 million a year.
"We have a Dublin Taoiseach who is certainly not going to go down as the Taoiseach who did not bring in Luas," Ms O'Rourke said. However, she could not approve a project without having the fullest facts.
The Minister said that, if she blindly sanctioned CIE's current £220 million project, she would go down in history with that "pinned to my bonnet". That was why she had commissioned independent consultants to examine the underground option.
She stressed that she was not "hung up" on putting Luas underground or on-street. If the consultancy study recommended the present proposal, it would be a case of "away we go". If it recommended going underground, "away we go with further planning".
Without the independent study, Ms O'Rourke said, the public inquiry chaired by Judge Sean O'Leary would have been stalled because those who favoured the underground option would feel their argument had not received a fair hearing.
She accepted that it was "two minutes to midnight" in planning terms, but said that even if she was Cinderella, she was determined to have the facts in front of her. But she could give an unequivocal guarantee that Luas would be funded and it would happen.
Tomorrow she would be meeting the European Commissioner for Regional Affairs, Ms Monika Wulf-Mathies, for a frank discussion about the project. But she did not anticipate that the Commissioner would threaten to withdraw EU funding.
Asked what would happen if EU funding was withdrawn, she said the Government was committed to going ahead with it anyway, and she would be confirming her own enthusiasm for the project at the meeting with Ms Wulf-Mathies.
She said capital funding for Luas had been increased from £9 million to £20 million in the estimates for 1998. This was the sum sought by the Luas project team for further planning work on the project, including a third line to Ballymun.
The Minister said she was hoping that the consultancy study would be completed to coincide with the mid-term review of spending under the EU structural funds. Soon afterwards, she expected that Judge O'Leary would reopen the public inquiry.
She accepted that the timetable was very tight but she was hopeful that the project would fall within the period of prolongation to the year 2001 which the Commission allowed for spending on major projects in the current tranche of structural funds.
"If we do not reach that, there are two options," the Minister said. One would be full funding by the Government and the other would involve seeking an allocation of funds under the next tranche of EU funds, covering the post-1999 period.
