The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, has established a reputation for getting things done since he took office 15 months ago.
Yesterday, he gave another assurance that Dublin's Luas light rail project, which has been bedevil- led by delay and a massive cost over-run, will be delivered on time and within budget. However, it is difficult to reconcile this confident statement with the ominous tone of a letter from the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) to Mr Eoin Ryan TD, chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, or with Mr Brennan's own weekend revelation that the project will now cost €765 million.
In the letter dated August 26th, Mr Frank Allen, the RPA's chief executive, expressed concern about the reliability of the contractor's completion dates for the overall project and said all of the agency's efforts were now directed towards securing "credible assurances" from AMB JV regarding the timely delivery of the project by next summer. As for the out-turn cost, Mr Brennan said the RPA had told him that the entire "contingency fund" of €90 million was likely to be used up, bringing the overall figure to its latest dizzying height. He is also trying to cap it at that level, saying AMB's most recent claim for a further €50 million will not be met.
Although the RPA has rejected Mr Ryan's allegation that Luas was turning into a fiasco, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the entire project has become synonymous with chaos in the streets and in the account books. Even when it is finished, what Dublin will be getting is not a "system" but merely two free-standing light rail lines - one running between Sandyford and St Stephen's Green and the other between Tallaght and Connolly Station - with no physical connection between them.
The blame for this disjunction - nonsensical in terms of transport planning - rests with the Government's cowardly decision in 1998 to scrap the link in the city centre. At that time, Mr Brennan's predecessor, Ms Mary O'Rourke, announced what she called "the grand plan" for a Luas network extending to Ballymun, Dublin Airport, Swords, Docklands and Cabinteely, with an underground section between St Stephen's Green and Broadstone. Ludicrously, the cost of all this was estimated by Ms O'Rourke at "£400 million-plus" - considerably less than the running total for the two lines currently under construction. Now, the only project that seems to be on the agenda is a metro line to the airport, to be financed entirely by private investment and paid for by the State only after it starts running.
Surely someone as canny as Mr Brennan can see there is something decidedly odd about expecting public transport to be funded by private money while an estimated €21 billion, most of it from the Exchequer, will be needed to finance the Government's highly questionable motorway programme that will largely cater for private transport? Indeed, so much money is to be spent on motorways - €680 million alone on the M3 scheme approved last week by An Bord Pleanála - that there will be nothing to finance much-needed investment in public transport, whether or not payment is deferred by funding mechanisms of the type suggested for the airport metro.