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28/09/2004

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FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF EXTRACT FROM:

 

 

 

PROGRAMME	MORNING IRELAND		STATION	RTE RADIO 1
(BUSINESS NEWS)			DATE & TIME	28.09.2004 – 7.00 A.M.
SUBJECT	LUAS RED LINE - TALLAGHT		OUR REF.	DEJ – 28.09.2004
			DURATION PRESENTER	7 MINUTES

 

PRESENTER – CATHAL MacCOILLE

 

Tallaght’s going to feel a lot closer from later on today.  Speaking of which, somebody whose there already in The Square in Tallaght is John Murray with the early business.  Morning John.

 

PRESENTER - JOHN MURRAY

 

Good morning to you Cathal.   Well Carlow may have their Ploughing Championships, but here in Tallaght now from this morning and they can say they have their LUAS.  We’re here at the… the Red Line terminus, which is sandwiched between The Square and the headquarters of South Dublin County Council in the heart of Tallaght.  The trams, which you may be able to hear in the background… are being put through their final paces before their formal launch by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in just over two hours.  

 

I’m joined by Peter Byrne, Chief Executive of South Dublin Chamber of Commerce.  Peter, just how significant is the advent of LUAS for the local economy?

 

PETER BYRNE – CHIEF EXECUTIVE – SOUTH DUBLIN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

 

Today’s one of the most important days for the business community of South Dublin County and in particular those in Tallaght and along the red line.  And the reason for that is that we have a twenty-first century town that’s now going to have a twenty-first century public transport system.   That’s going to benefit everybody in two key ways.  Number one it’ll mean that more people will be coming in to the area so therefore more business will be done.  And secondly and equally important for business it means that we’ll be able to retain employees and we’ll be able to offer a transport system that will make our area a very attractive area to come and work in.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

Anybody visiting here this morning will be struck by the… the level of activity.  Just beside us here we have frantic activity with, I think, at last count about fourteen cranes dotting the skyline, what exactly is happening here?

 

PETER BYRNE

 

What you’re looking at is the most amazing development, I think, in Irish development of towns, in that we have a planned town going ahead now, we’ve fourteen cranes on the horizon building close on two thousand apartments and eight hundred thousand square feet of retail, that’s a lot of shopping to bring people out from the city.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

And there’s also a plan, which I think the people of Cork may be concerned about, were Tallaght to acquire second city status… is this just with the LUAS that you’re getting a bit confident?

 

PETER BYRNE

 

Well the LUAS will bring more people in. We’ll have more people living here, and yes, I think Cork will ultimately become the third city and we’ll be equally generous to them as they have been to us.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

And how realistic though is it?  I mean Tallaght really it’s a suburb of Dublin and perhaps hasn’t been able to develop its own identity in recent years?

 

PETER BYRNE

 

The LUAS is going to be part of that identity.  We have… if you stand where we are right now and you look around you can see that we have a hospital, we have an Institute of Technology, we have a major shopping centre, we have our County Council offices.  There’s everything you could want in a city.  And yes, our relationship with Dublin City is extremely strong and always will be, but Tallaght’s a place in its own right, as is Clondalkin and Lucan.

 

JOHH MURRAY

 

Okay, Peter Byrne, Chief Executive of South Dublin Chamber of Commerce, thank you for joining us this morning.  And we’ll have lots more on the business of LUAS in our later bulletin at ten to eight.

 

** Later in the programme.

 

CATHAL MacCOILLE

 

We’re going to busless Tallaght and John for the main business news.  Morning John.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

Well isn’t it fortunate Cathal that they’ll have the LUAS from nine thirty onwards this morning.   We’re here at the red line terminus in The Square.  Incidentally at full capacity the red line will be able to carry some forty thousand consumers every day.  Now probably Tallaght’s best known place of employment, Jacobs on the Belgard Road, was recently taken over by Fruitfield, which is based on the near-by Blessington Road.  Chief Executive of the newly formed food group is Michael Carey, we’ll hear from him in a moment. 

 

But first, South Dublin County Manager, Joe Horan, is here to tell us about some of the economic progress made in the locality in recent years.  Joe Horan, good morning.  This part of Dublin used to be associated with suburban isolation and planning incompetence.   From what we see here today the tide definitely turned?

 

JOE HORAN – SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY MANAGER

 

Well… over the last ten years there has been dramatic change in the spatial planning.  I suppose people traditionally would have looked at this as a kind of a low-density planned area, now we’re looking at a framework plan and particular in the centre of Tallaght here there about eleven key sites and it has an interesting mix of residential, commercial and retail development.  It’s all done in the context of spatial planning, so there’s easy walking distance etc. to the various facilities.  So that has been done in the context of LUAS arriving and there has been a dramatic change over the last ten years.

 

For example the county itself has a population of almost a quarter of a million now and that is increased by nine percent since the last census.  We also have a very young population here, forty-two percent of them under twenty-five.   So things are rapidly changing and obviously spatial planning is key to getting that right.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

Now how important is tax designation to the… the future of economic… or the economic well-being of the area and to business and industry locally?

 

JOE HORAN

 

Well anyone who looks at the framework plan and the quality of the buildings that are being built at the moment and people are struck by the levels of activity, on those eleven key sites most of that could not have happened without tax designation.  The construction costs alone of what we’re looking at is well in excess of six hundred and forty million, so to generate that level of activity in a short period would not have been possible without tax designation.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

Okay, Michael Carey, you’re probably one of the biggest employers if not the biggest employer in the Tallaght area, what does the arrival of LUAS mean for… for local… for local employers?

 

MICHAEL CAREY – CHIEF EXECUTIVE - JACOB FRUITFIELD FOOD GROUP

 

I think this morning marks another step towards improving the Tallaght transport infrastructure.  We’ve already got the links with the M50 and now having Tallaght linked through the LUAS just improves and probably makes Tallaght one of the best locations for… for employment, for manufacturing in… probably in Ireland.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

And are their practical benefits for the workers at Jacobs and Fruitfield?

 

MICHAEL CAREY

 

Well when… when these two businesses, Jacobs and Fruitfield both within half a mile of this location, when they set up here first back in the seventies they moved from the centre of Dublin and the biggest issue facing this… this business at the time was access for employees.  Today that’s no longer a problem.   Having said that in the immediate future and at the moment with the present make-up of our employees. We have about five hundred and fifty people employed in the business today, a lot of them live locally and a few of them live actually on the line.  But it does open up the opportunity for future employment.  It opens up the… it widens the net of recruitment for us to… to bring in people into the business in the future.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

And obviously over the last ten, fifteen years the area has undergone a transformation, for business now as it has all the necessary infrastructure to… to compete successfully?

 

MICHAEL CAREY

 

I think Tallaght with its present infrastructure and today with LUAS being added to that list of infrastructure it probably is the best place in Ireland to have a… have a manufacturing base.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

Joe Horan, given the… what shall I say, the development that has taken place here… what is required of government, for instance, to make sure that… that the “ball continues to roll”?

 

JOE HORAN

 

Well obviously we’re looking at the whole mobility strategy within the county.  How we move between the N4 the N7 and all the various connections.   We’re looking at enhancing the role of the bus, we think that’s key and obviously in the long-term the Metro.  So there needs to be continued investment obviously in the whole public transport.  But as a local authority we ourselves have a role to play in working out the mobility within the county, how people get to and from work and we’re at this point in time preparing a strategy to do that.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

But any regular visitor to Tallaght will notice that there is quite a bit of traffic congestion and LUAS ain’t going to really solve that problem necessarily on its own will it?

 

JOE HORAN

 

Well it… I think it’s only fair to say that you have to look at how people make trips, why they make trips and for that reason we embarked on a study with out own staff and around this entire area, we’re looking at the origin/destinations studies all the kind of issues which would give us a context in which we would place things like strategic park and ride and integrating other forms of transport with LUAS.    LUAS is a key piece of that infrastructure and everything else must work towards that.

 

JOHN MURRAY

 

Okay Joe Horan, South Dublin County Manager and Michael Carey, Chief Executive of the Jacob Fruitfield Food Group, I think I got that one right.

 

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