The scandal that is MetroLink illustrates everything that is intellectually rotten in modern Ireland. Across 30 or 40 years, hundreds of millions have been wasted on a project or, more correctly, a series of different versions of a project, to build some form of underground rail system for Dublin.
Before a shovel is put in the ground, the present version, MetroLink, will have cost us between €400 million and €500 million in planning, engineering and other costs involved in securing approval for the scheme.
The shocking thing is in the late 1990s the Mitsui Corporation, a Japanese conglomerate, told the Irish government that it would construct an “x”-shaped Dublin underground system with a single central hub for nothing – yes, at its own expense, bar a small initial injection of funds from the State – in exchange for the right to operate it as franchisee for 25 years.
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Meanwhile, we spent about €150 million on an entirely different underground project, the Dart interconnector, which was to connect a mainline rail service underground from Heuston station to the east coast railway with several tube stations at High Street, St Stephen’s Green and Pearse station.
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First proposed in 1992, it formed part of a Greater Dublin Transport Strategy published in 2016 but was excluded from the National Development Plan published in 2018. A railway order for its construction was obtained in 2011 on the basis that private capital would fund its estimated €4 billion cost. The railway order expired in 2015, and with it, the Dart Underground expired too.
The quango called the National Transport Authority (NTA) had produced a draft Transport Strategy in 2015 which envisaged that Dart Underground might still be built by 2035.
The NTA took over transport planning for Greater Dublin and incorporated an earlier agency, the Dublin Transport Office. The separate Railway Procurement Agency managed to escape incorporation into the National Transport Authority. But the old CIÉ companies, Dublin Bus, Irish Rail, and Bus Éireann are legally obliged to accept NTA direction in Dublin. Transport Infrastructure Ireland is a brand name adopted for certain purposes by the National Transport Authority. You get the picture.
Anyhow, the NTA began working on an underground metro system which would connect Dublin Airport to Sandyford with fully automated trains operating in twin tunnels and which would cannibalise the Luas Green Line. That line was, at one stage, planned to go underground in the city centre but was later left with a terminus as St Stephen’s Green. Eventually, it was built in a second phase on the surface between St Stephen’s Green and Broombridge.
The new NTA plan was to use the Ranelagh to Sandyford surface section of Luas as part of the metro to the airport and Swords. However, this involved the likely closure of the Green Line for two or three years as the system was to be completely segregated and have etro stations constructed to replace the Luas stops. Tram services from Sandyford to Brides Glen and from Charlemont to Broombridge would continue as separate surface services.m
This plan, in turn, was abandoned so that MetroLink would have its southern terminus at Grand Parade on the hugely congested canal cross-city route or via a rear entrance with setting down for four cars on the largely unknown Dartmouth Road in Ranelagh.
When Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan sensibly suggested that the southern terminus be left at the proposed St Stephen’s Green station to leave open the possibility of its south central extension to Terenure, Churchtown and Tallaght, he was told that even altering plans to shorten the route at this stage would costs hundreds of millions of euro and delay the project further.
When MetroLink was first proposed in its latest form (which abandoned the twin tunnel plans in favour of a cheaper single-bore model), the NTA estimated its cost to be about €3.5 billion.
That figure was generally considered to be grossly optimistic. It grew by stages to €11 billion. But the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee worried that even that figure could be a gross underestimate and suggested that the eventual true cost could be €20 billion.
Now we know that Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien has been formally warned that the cost could exceed €23 billion. That is about five times the cost on which approval was originally sought by the National Transport Authority.
Compared with alternative transport infrastructure for Dublin, including up to five new Luas lines to be built by a public-private partnership system, MetroLink is simply bad value and destined to be a calamitous money pit. And it has not secured approval yet from the soon to be restructured An Bord Pleanála.
If you think that the children’s hospital or the Leinster Lawn bike shelter should teach us some lessons but haven’t, the case for blowing the whistle on MetroLink seems very strong indeed.
The difference is that we are blundering into this quango-driven catastrophe with our eyes wide open. Echoing this paper’s great commentator, John Healy: “Will no one cry stop?”
