{"id":485949,"date":"2026-06-06T09:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T09:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/485949\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T09:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T09:48:11","slug":"scrapped-e50m-irish-rail-it-project-could-lead-to-extra-costs-of-up-to-e800000-a-month-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/485949\/","title":{"rendered":"Scrapped \u20ac50m Irish Rail IT project could lead to extra costs of up to \u20ac800,000 a month \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The State could face extra costs of up to \u20ac800,000 a month if the planned introduction next year of a new train signalling system in Cork<\/a> is delayed as a result of problems with a beleaguered railway IT system, the National Transport Authority<\/a> (NTA) has warned.<\/p>\n

Official documents also show the Government is to provide nearly \u20ac20 million over the next three years in additional funding to boost resilience in existing signalling on the key rail arteries around Dublin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is \u201cto mitigate the risk of a major failure\u201d of the existing central traffic control system at Connolly Station as a result of delays in introducing its planned replacement. <\/p>\n

NTA and rail chiefs have been working for several years on the development of an IT initiative known as the traffic management system (TMS) to control train movements across the network.<\/p>\n

However, the TMS project has been beset by delays and cost overruns. Last month the board of Irish Rail<\/a> wrote down by \u20ac50 million<\/a> the value of its investment in the project.<\/p>\n

The Irish Times understands the Irish Rail board made the decision after initial testing revealed problems with the latest software delivered by its contractor, Indra. <\/p>\n

The NTA said the commissioning of the first phase of the TMS project would now \u201calmost certainly not be delivered in January 2027\u201d. The Irish Rail board was told in March it could be 2030 or later before the full roll out was completed.<\/p>\n

Oireachtas committees, starting next week, are scheduled to question Irish Rail and the NTA on whether tens of millions of euro has been wasted<\/p>\n

The TMS forms part of an overall new National Train Control Centre (NTCC), which is being developed in a new building at Heuston Station, Dublin.<\/p>\n

An NTA report for the D\u00e1il Public Accounts Committee<\/a> this week showed that up to April \u20ac152.2 million had been spent on the NTCC, including on the new building. So far \u20ac31.2 million has been spent on the TMS element.<\/p>\n

The NTA had previously estimated the NTCC would cost about \u20ac188 million overall.<\/p>\n

However, it now said, \u201cgiven the current status of the TMS software design and the assessment of options for the progression to completion of the project, it is not possible to confirm the final out-turn cost of the project at this stage\u201d. <\/p>\n

In advance of the commissioning of a new signalling system in Cork in August 2027, a suitable TMS would be needed, the NTA said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is a delay to the commissioning date for the Cork signalling system, this could lead to additional costs on the project including contractor delay claims and internal and external project management of up to \u20ac800,000 per month,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Irish Rail said it had sought approval from the NTA for an intervention to facilitate commissioning of Cork signalling, which would reduce risk of additional costs.<\/p>\n

In its report, the NTA said it was assessing options to progress the TMS project to completion with Irish Rail and Indra. <\/p>\n

The authority told The Irish Times it did not consider the project to be dead.<\/p>\n

It is understood that among the options under consideration is that another IT contractor could be brought in to work alongside Indra. <\/p>\n

However, it is understood that within Irish Rail there is a view that Indra should not be part of the solution.<\/p>\n

Indra has not made any comment on foot of a number of requests from The Irish Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The State could face extra costs of up to \u20ac800,000 a month if the planned introduction next year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,46,615,61,60,16455,7942],"class_list":["post-485949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-cork","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-rail","tag-national-transport-authority"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}