The NRA and their “missing email”

A report in the motoring supplement of the Irish Times on Wednesday told of how The Dublin Port Tunnel will not be taking part in a major European tunnel safety assessment scheme because there was a “missing email between the National Roads Authority” and the group carrying out the report. It was headlined “No Record of Tunnel Test Request” and was the leading article on the frontpage of the supplement.

Tim O’Brien wrote…

The NRA said it sent an e-mail application to Eurotap [the assessment group] in March 2008 requesting the inclusion of the Dublin Port Tunnel in the programme, which measures compliance with a 2004 EU directive on tunnel safety.

The tunnel has been dogged by problems with its safety systems since its opening in December 2006. A safety report from Egis Tunnels was commissioned in 2007 by tunnel operator, Transroute, which identified significant deficiencies in the tunnel’s automatic control system.

The date that the NRA claim they sent the email is interesting. Safety issues have given them serious trouble since day one, but they came to head near the end of February 2008.

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In December 2007, as reported in The Irish Times, a truck overturned in the tunnel causing traffic chaos but more notably, spilling fuel, questions were asked why it took six hours to clear the truck and what the consequences would have been were the fuel to have ignited.

One month later the NRA announced they were going to remove defective tiles from the roof of the tunnel. The tiles were “prone to ‘float’ in high winds making them a potential hazard for drivers and leading to ongoing maintenance problems. A number of drivers, alarmed at the sight of the tiles falling, had contacted media organisations and the NRA to complain”.

On February 29th and again on March 4th last year RTÉ’s Prime Time ran reports detailing how the NRA was keeping the tunnel open contrary to safety manual procedures. The investigation also shone light on the fact that fans designed to fight fires in the tunnel had failed consistently on an on-going basis over a number of months, 13 at the same time in one instance, yet the tunnel remained open. It also detailed how the computer systems designed to monitor the temperature inside the tunnel – amongst other things – had failed without resulting in the tunnels closure. Finally, the report noted that water containers inside the tunnel had the potential to block vehicle exiting in emergency situations. A damning report.

A week later on March 11th a small fire in the tunnel caused its closure for five hours, the safety mechanisms, in the glaring media spotlight at the time, reacted relatively well. There were reports that traffic had been allowed continue into the northbound side of the tunnel while the fire burned on the southbound side but these were either not followed up on, or were unfounded.

So, looking at those dates, it would be fair to assume, based on the laws of probability, that the “missing email application sent in March 2008″ was sent or received between the date of the fire (March 11th) and March 26th when the NRA Chief Executive Fred Barry went before an Oireachtas Committee to answer questions on the cost and safety standards relating to the tunnel.

Taking the language used by Tim O’Brien in his report this week to be correct, “application” would indicate that the direction of communication was, and could only have been, from the NRA to Eurotap, the safety assessment body.

Now, assuming that…

• the NRA, being a State body, has some sort of IT department monitoring the data on its servers,

• that the application could only have been sent from one of a relatively small number of NRA accounts

…and

• that the date the email was sent on could be narrowed down to within 30 days (March 2008) making locating the data on the server not that difficult.

It would be therefore be feasible to find the date the email was sent on, from whom and to whom – and show all that to Eurotap and the media.

If the NRA did that they could prove that they did, as they said they did, send the email to Eurotap and thus the blame, as they wish it to be, could be placed rightly on the shoulders of Eurotap for leaving them out of the safety assessment.

However, we all know they won’t do that because it’s quite clear that the NRA purposefully didn’t send the email in case the the results compounded the damning revelations of the Prime Time report which had emerged in the prior week (or possibly even days).

A disgusting and shameful excuse from the NRA.

Safe driving.