Following the establishment of the National Transport Authority in December 2009, the implementation and development of infrastructure projects in the greater Dublin area, such as Metro North come under the remit of the NTA.
The legislative basis for this is section 11(1)(e) of the DTA Act 2008 “Principal Functions of authority: the principal functions of the authority are to secure the provision of public transport infrastructure”. Notwithstanding the above, I understand from the NTA that their current estimate for Metro North costs in 2011 is of the order of €18 million of which €2.83 million has been spent to end April. The funding for this project comes from the overall capital allocation of €216 million provided by my Department to the NTA for public transport projects in 2011.
This project, together with all capital projects is currently under review as part of the Government's comprehensive spending review.