Rail Network
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-18
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

The National Train Control Centre building was completed in November 2022, on time and within budget, despite significant disruption to the construction sector throughout the Covid pandemic. While the building today houses some signalling operations and Iarnród Éireann staff, as well as approximately 100 personnel of An Garda Síochána overseeing communications in the Dublin metropolitan region, bringing the centre into full operation has been delayed by slower-than-projected progress in developing and rolling out the new traffic management system, which is the software that integrates a range of complex railway systems, such as signalling and communications.
Taxpayers and train users are rightly concerned about this delay as I am too, I assure the Deputy. In my capacity as Minister, I have met with Indra, the contractor delivering the traffic management system. I met them last August and again in January of this year.
On both occasions, I expressed my clear dissatisfaction with the state of progress and emphasised the importance of bringing the project to a successful conclusion as quickly as possible.
A re-baselined programme was agreed between Iarnród Éireann, the NTA and Indra in November 2024, breaking the project into eight discrete commissioning phases to improve deliverability and realise benefits incrementally. The contractor delivered software to Iarnród Éireann in mid-April to support the planned implementation of commissioning phase 1 on the Rosslare line for early next year. A three-month software testing period is now ongoing. Decisions on software acceptance and future commissioning phases will be taken in mid-July, the middle of next month.
Given issues in terms of project delivery, I understand that the board of Iarnród Éireann is also considering potential options for the future delivery of the project. I await its recommendations, which I have not received yet. In advance of the conclusion of software testing and consideration by the Iarnród Éireann board, it would be premature to discuss schedule and cost implications for the project because I do not have that information yet.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-18