The Government may decide next Tuesday to go ahead after all with the £227 million Luas light rail project for Dublin, after considering the W.S. Atkins consultancy report on whether it should run underground in the city centre.
The Atkins study, believed to be 120 pages long, was delivered to the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, yesterday evening. She will consider its contents over the weekend before making a recommendation to Cabinet.
Tentative preparations are being made for a press conference the same day if a decision is made.
The contents of the study are a closely-guarded secret, known to a relatively small circle of senior officials. It is understood from reliable sources that it focuses on the on-street option proposed by CIE.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, who is understood to be playing a key role in the process, told the Dail earlier this week that he would be prepared to allocate time for a debate on Luas next Wednesday. This, too, would point to a decision being made the previous day.
Mr Ahern met the European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Ms Monika Wulf-Mathies, last Monday and it is believed that they discussed Luas and the fate of the £114 million in EU aid which has been allocated for an on-street light rail system.
The Commissioner has made it clear that this sum would have to be reallocated if a decision was made to go underground, because of the length of time it would take to redesign the project. But one source said this consideration would not be the "driving force."
Another straw in the wind is that the Luas public inquiry, chaired by Judge Sean O'Leary, has been scheduled to reopen on June 2nd. Recently, the judge met senior members of the CIE project team to work out a running order for their evidence.
One source close to the project said it was "inconceivable" that the judge would have been reappointed and the inquiry scheduled to reopen if there was no intention to proceed. "You couldn't have the inquiry if it was going to be put in a tunnel," he said.
It is expected that the Atkins report will detail the "pluses and minuses" of both the on-street and underground options. It is also anticipated that the English consultants involved in the study will be invited to present their findings to Ministers on Tuesday.
One of the possibilities is that the Government will decide to go ahead with phase one of the Luas project - the line between Tallaght and Sandyford, via the city centre - while leaving open the question of going under ground.
Mr Ahern is conscious that any perceived failure on the transport front would inevitably affect the fortunes of Fianna Fail's 21 Dublin TDs.
If Luas gets the green light, transport analysts expect that other elements of the Dublin Transportation Initiative's 1994 strategy for dealing with the capital's traffic problems will quickly fall into place.
