DART to run an extra weekend as Brennan intervenes

Iarnród Éireann made further concessions in its plans for weekend closure of Dublin's DART service in the run up to Christmas.

The changes which follow the intervention of the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, yesterday, will now mean that DART will operate fully for the three weekends preceding Christmas.

Iarnród Éireann's spokesman Mr Barry Kenny said yesterday that suspending the work during the busy Christmas shopping period could leave the company open to cost overruns and delays.

The Department of Transport announced last night that it did "not expect there to be any excess in the €170 million budget and fully expects the three weekends out of the 75 weekend contract period can be made up in the valley period after Christmas."

In a strongly worded statement the Department said the full extent of the proposed closures had only been brought to the Minister's attention on Monday evening when he was personally briefed on them by the chairman of CIÉ, Dr John Lynch who is also the chairman of Iarnród Éireann.

Mr Brennan expressed concern for the Christmas shopping period which is one of the busiest periods of the year for DART but he was also sharply critical of Iarnród's Éireann's "failure to communicate either the closure or the fairly good alternative transport arrangements to its customers", the Minister's spokesman said last night.

The new arrangements follow a day of tough talking between Iarnród Éireann and the Department with an initial offer from Dr Lynch to keep just two weekends operational in the December run up to Christmas, rejected as unacceptable by the Minister.

Iarnród Éireann had planned from the beginning of this year to close DART stations between Grand Canal Basin and Greystones from this coming weekend until the middle of next year to allow a major modernisation programme to go ahead.

The modernisation programme includes lengthening platforms, improving footbridges, working on power lines and new sidings for extra DART trains.

The company spokesman Mr Kenny said yesterday that while the disruption was regrettable the public had spent much of the summer listening to cost overruns and delays with other infrastructure projects and they did not want to hear this of DART.

He said work would go on at night as well as at weekends, and the company had a good record on bringing in projects on time and under budget.

Mr Kenny said the Department had known for months of the plans to begin work in the autumn, while the Sunday Tribune took advertisement space in this newspaper yesterday to point out it had reported on the planned closures on September 7th.

The Department spokesman said the Minister was "firmly of the view" that the company had failed to advise its customers of the detail and extent of the closures and added that the Minister was looking forward to a new public information campaign.