With our track record, Metro will be a cash pit
TO SAVE time and money, and to introduce public officials to the novel experience of doing both, it makes sense to start an inquiry into the cost of Metrolink that can run alongside the hearing into the project currently under way.
This concurrent approach would be as close to twin tracks as this fantasy will get for a very long time, after all.
As State bodies quibble about whether moving trees and shifting bollards for a new station would come ‘at the expense of Ireland’s national heritage’, as claimed by the Office of Public Works, the public can look on, aghast, at the creation, in real time, of the next major infrastructure shambles.
Misery
As the Children’s Hospital project balloons in cost and with a completion date still uncertain, a fresh multibillion-euro misery is in the offing.
Metrolink is planned as a 16 station, 18.8km underground route running from south Dublin northwards as far as Swords, including a stop at the airport.
It is an ideal transport link for a city where authorities want to reduce car use. In an age when environmental consciousness should be to the fore of our decision-making, public schemes of this nature are vital.
The problem is Ireland – and our dreadful record of getting big, ambitious plans like this from drawing board to reality.
And after a week of oral hearings into Metrolink, the chilling feeling grows, that a familiar disaster is ready to unfold.
The cost involved is an obvious distress signal. It’s projected at €9.5billion, an astounding amount of money but a case can be made for such an investment for a system that could carry 53 million passengers a year.
But it’s impossible to believe this is the real cost, or that the final bill won’t be far higher, and this is a legacy of decades of squander, of which the Children’s Hospital is the current prime example.
It’s not outlandish to suggest it will be overtaken by Metrolink as a yawning sinkhole consuming time, money and goodwill.
And each fresh crisis will be met with political handwringing, and the entire lame drama will only deepen the suspicion that those entrusted with spending taxpayers’ money simply don’t have respect for how it is earned, or how its waste is received.
This view may seem premature, given hearings are continuing in a hotel in Dublin city centre, but the disagreement between the OPW and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, the State body responsible for Metrolink, is only the latest cause for concern.
Last week high-powered senior counsels argued against the metro terminating in the comfortable suburb of Ranelagh. We should expect much more of this type of intervention should it ever proceed to planning.
A forerunner was Metro North, granted planning permission in 2011 but abandoned a year later as the national finances were in tatters – and after tens of millions were spent in preparatory work.
The project was revived at the end of the last decade, and since then has been revised further.
The oral hearings now under way are scheduled to last six weeks but, entirely fittingly, they are expected to run beyond that deadline with dozens of interested parties slated to appear.
Submissions
These include the OPW, whose issue with the plans for a station at St Stephen’s Green is one of 28 submissions it has made.
Rigorous analysis is required, and the concerns of homeowners, businesses and State bodies should be aired.
But if there is a person in the country who believes this project will begin next year, as planned, and finish by 2035, they should be envied their optimism – or helpless naivety.
Because that is not how Ireland works, as another slow-rumbling, cash-burning project, the relocation of the National Maternity Hospital, also proves.
The Cabinet gave approval for that move last July, with the price estimated at €1billion. When it was first mooted a decade earlier, the cost was €300million.
These grotesque spending blowouts are not because of war in Ukraine, or the cost of living; they may be contributory factors, but the truth is the State has failed for years to deliver major building initiatives on time.
There is no reason on earth to suppose that Metrolink will be any different.