The Luas light rail system will be delayed by a further three months, the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, has conceded.
The Railway Procurement Agency had said that construction would be completed on the Tallaght line by May 2004 and March 2004 for the Sandyford line, but a period of up to three months would be required after that for testing commissioning and general safety checking before passenger services start.
The Minister was speaking in the Dáil as he rejected a Green Party Bill to create a new transport agency with overall responsibility for a better integrated infrastructure.
Mr Brennan said it would be an administrative mess which would set back ongoing projects by years.
The National Transport Authority Bill was introduced by the Green Party's transport spokesman, Mr Eamon Ryan, who said the party's main concern in drafting the Bill was the lack of strategic thinking within the National Roads Authority, "which is very much associated with its limited view of its own statutory remit".
The Bill aimed for better integration in the "planning for and provision of our transport infrastructure and also to provide better coherence between both local and national planning and transport strategies".
The party's finance spokesman, Mr Dan Boyle, said the Luas was costing six times as much as a similar system in Madrid, because the agencies were competing. The Green Party was suggesting a single co-ordinated and better-integrated agency.
The Minister said, however, that the Bill would abolish the central functions of existing agencies and did nothing to replace them.
