Dublin’s planned new metro system will need about 8,000 workers to construct, an Oireachtas committee has been told.
MetroLink programme director Sean Sweeney said the largest contracts for the development of the 19km rail line, planned to run from south of Dublin’s city centre to Swords in the north of the county, would be with international firms that were expected to bring in some personnel from abroad.
“There are no firms of the scale or expertise in Ireland to run those major contracts,” he told the Oireachtas committee on Transport on Wednesday. “They [the international companies] will bring a proportion of workers in and will be looking to supplement with local labour. We have done extensive Irish workforce analysis.”
“The top line is that the Irish construction industry cannot support the construction of this project and even that is without factoring in the other major infrastructure projects that are in play at the moment as well.”
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“We think it is going to be a challenge. The constructors that I have spoken to know it is going to be a challenge. We are looking to engage with the local market but I think we are going to exhaust the local workforce before we run out of work for them,” Mr Sweeney added.
He said a lot of work had been put into planning for the housing for the MetroLink workforce.
“We are working with the Land Development Agency to see what options there are,” he said.
The rail link has 16 planned stops and will run largely underground, through both tunnelling and cut-and-cover sections of track. It will serve Dublin Airport and several locations in the city centre, as well as the increasingly populous northside suburbs.
Fine Gael TD Grace Boland said a programme or framework must be put in place for housing workers involved in the project, whether they be in temporary on-site accommodation or otherwise, and that it would be important to engage with the local authority in Fingal immediately to put in place a process for dealing with this issue.
Mr Sweeney said the MetroLink project was not looking at taking from existing housing plans to accommodate its workers but rather to add to those developments currently being considered.
“In simple terms, we have a large need. We can make a commitment to taking an amount of stock and enable developments that we are unable to get off the ground now and make them viable.”
Lorcan O’Connor, chief executive of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, said even in Dublin there were viability challenges surrounding the development of apartments.
“Where those are marginal, the fact we could commit to occupying those in the first few years makes those bankable for whoever might be considering their development. Ultimately, it is positive in terms of overall housing stock and allows others to concentrate on those that are viable,” he said.
Mr Sweeney said a comprehensive re-costing of the MetroLink project was under way and would be available early next year.
[ Two consortiums will bid to build long-awaited MetroLinkOpens in new window ]
He said the projected costs of the metro project in the public domain at present were based on a 2022 business case but were derived from figures going back to 2014 to 2019 that had been “escalated up”.
“They have a lot of approximations in them. We have embarked on a comprehensive re-costing of the metro project at the same time the construction design is being completed and we are working in parallel with that.”
However, he said the new costings to come out early next year would be based on earlier designs as the final tender designs for the metro system.
He said tender designs for MetroLink will not be finalised until next month.
Mr O’Connor said the most recent cost estimate for MetroLink, taken from the preliminary business case, was €9.5 billion excluding VAT.
“It is important to note that this figure is three years old and does not reflect significant construction industry inflation in recent years, as well as a number of new requirements and commitments that have been incorporated through the Railway Order process – all of which will influence the updated cost profile,” he said.
In a statement on Wednesday night a spokesman for MetroLink said it recognised there would need to be “a combination of a local and global presence to deliver the programme and is working on a strategy to support our workforce, including an accommodation strategy”.
“At this stage, workforce planning has considered both timing and the type of work. Early phases, such as the advance and enabling works, will likely be more focused on Ireland’s domestic contractor market. Demand from international firms, which may increase pressure on accommodation, is expected to peak once the main civil works begin some years from now, with planning well underway to support.”
“Amidst global and national housing supply issues, we have assigned a dedicated team who are considering the logistical challenges associated with housing a workforce in Ireland. As part of this, we’re exploring a wide range of mitigations, including collaborating with various organisations, inter alia, the Land Development Agency, to assist in meeting this accommodation challenge and to accelerate and add stock which may then be returned back to the state, post-completion of the MetroLink programme.”
