I thank the Chairman. I had not intended to read the document as I have about five minutes, so I will hit the salient points. Dublin Chamber of Commerce represents 1,400 members of the business community in and around the city. It is fair to say that the package of proposals including the metro north and associated projects — the city centre Luas and the DART from the Docklands to Heuston — is one of the biggest issues facing the business community in terms of both potential disruption and potential benefits. We have given serious thought to the presentation we have put together; it has been widely distributed and many comments have been incorporated. It is a well thought out commentary about where we are.
Essentially, we support Transport 21 unreservedly. We see it as the first phase of a comprehensive public transport plan for the Dublin region. We do not see it as a one-off. The Dublin region is due to enlarge, in terms of population, by about 500,000 by 2020. What is proposed now will perhaps sort us out by 2020, but as the population expands we will probably need far more public infrastructure than these three projects.
We are keen not only to promote business interests, but also to point out that shoppers must be accommodated when the construction takes place. The shopping spend by people who drive into the city centre is four times greater than by those who travel in by bus or Luas. Therefore, the shopper experience in the city during construction is important. We understand that this Friday an important milestone will be reached — the Railway Procurement Agency is due to produce a railway application order for the metro north, which is part of the planning process. We will be responding in substantial detail to that order.
We are surprised, to say the least, that we are being given the minimum time required under the Act — six weeks — to comment on the biggest infrastructural project in the State, never mind in the city. A €4 billion spend on 17 stations across the city warrants a bit more than six weeks of contemplation. The first message we have is that the RPA should be as generous as possible in terms of giving people and organisations such as ourselves time to make substantial submissions on this railway order.
We support, unreservedly, the metro north, the interconnector and the BX line. These are long overdue and Dubliners have been suffering in terms of their traffic commutes. For a project as complicated as this we have several views, and I will summarise them briefly. There were some suggestions in the newspapers today that there might be budgetary difficulties with metro north. The Dublin Chamber of Commerce's view is that there should be no cutbacks, delays or scaling back of metro north. One of the main reasons is that private investors, through a PPP, will be spending most of the money on metro north. The Exchequer contribution, in the first year or two of the project, is very small. I understand it could be as small as €100 million, mainly for enabling works. There is no justification for delaying this critical transport project for the city.
There are two other related projects, the BX line in the city centre which will link St. Stephen's Green to O'Connell Street and then out to Broadstone and Grangegorman, and, more importantly, a DART or interconnector from the Docklands Station to Heuston Station. They should all be built at or around the same time. Unfortunately Irish Rail has a large project team working on its particular project, but it could be up to a year or two behind the Railway Procurement Agency. We believe they need to synchronise the start time of these projects. We cannot have a situation where there are 18 months of enabling works to divert utilities such as water and electricity on the 17 stations. Following this there are four years of construction of the stations themselves, and when they are finished there are another two years of construction of the BX line going through the city centre. At approximately the same time there are five DART stations being built from the Docklands Station to Heuston Station. We believe it is possible to do all of this construction in a much tighter timeframe. That is one of our key messages. We wish to have a tight, co-ordinated construction period. If metro north has to be slightly delayed to enable Irish Rail to catch up, we believe that should happen. The package should go ahead within five years, and not eight years as is currently the case.
We are not challenging or querying where the stations should be. There are 22 stations; we are leaving it up to the RPA. It has the wisdom and has consulted widely on this issue. We have no reservations about where the stations should be located or their size. There are specific issues which have been communicated to us about some detail which is critical and we will communicate this to the RPA as part of our submission.
Access to businesses is fundamental to this proposition. The RPA has consulted widely with many businesses near the stations which will be affected. However, we do not have, and will not have for some time, a detailed traffic management plan for the city in the period up to and including construction. That is one of the major flaws of the planning application. We are going into a planning situation where we do not have a detailed plan of action regarding what will happen with traffic near these stations. Businesses in O'Connell Street, St. Stephen's Green, Parnell Square or further out want to know what exactly is going to happen. Many businesses in the Dublin Chamber of Commerce that criss-cross the city regularly also want to know, in some detail, what to expect. We expect conditions will be attached to the railway order and that will be part of what we will say.
I want to mention future-proofing. There are certain points we feel strongly about. The current plan to build a DART tunnel from Docklands Station to Heuston Station is for the DART only. We believe Irish Rail should be more ambitious and plan to put urban or intercity trains into that tunnel. It should future-proof the design of the tunnel so it is not confined to DART trains. This will enable people from, for example, Drogheda, to get into Heuston Station and out to Maynooth or Kildare in 45 minutes on a fast, electric train. With renewable wind energy coming into the grid in that period it is an affordable and environmentally friendly solution. Irish Rail should look at the impact of the emissions of its fleet, which is a critical issue for us.
We welcome the setting up of the Dublin Transport Authority with which we wish to engage. We are disappointed it has not been set up already but we understand if the Estimates go in the right direction it will be set up on 1 January.
We also have very strong support for providing services into the city centre. This pre-construction and post-construction period will not happen unless Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann, and the private operators significantly enhance their fleets and traffic management and the positioning of buses, particularly in the city centre streets, is organised so that buses can get through the city as quickly as possible. I may not have done justice to the full statement but I have given the key points. With Ms Gina Quinn and the team I will be happy to take some questions from the committee.