… and Boris is serious over £20bn Irish bridge
BORIS Johnson is ‘serious’ about building a £20billion bridge to Northern Ireland, Downing Street said yesterday.
He has ordered Whitehall officials to carry out a ‘scoping exercise’ on options for a road link from the west coast of Scotland.
The idea was dismissed as a stunt when the Prime Minister first floated it in 2018.
But his official spokesman yesterday said ‘a proper piece of work’ was under way to assess whether building the longest bridge in Europe was feasible.
‘The PM set out that this was an idea which he believed could have some merit,’ said the spokesman.
‘As a result of that you would expect government to be looking into it. Officials are carrying out work in relation to the idea of a bridge linking the Great Britain mainland to Northern Ireland.’
Whitehall sources said a road bridge could ‘boost connectivity’ between UK regions at a time when the Union is under strain.
A source pointed out that the idea had support across the island of Ireland, with both the DUP and Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar enthusiastic about the project.
However, the engineering challenges are daunting.
Officials are looking at a possible 20-mile route linking Portpatrick, in Scotland, with Larne, in Northern Ireland.
The bridge would span a section of the Irish Sea which is up to 1,000ft deep. It would have to cross Beaufort’s Dyke, a sea trench where an estimated one million tons of conventional and chemical munitions were dumped by the Ministry of Defence.
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon suggested the bridge was a ‘diversion’. The SNP leader added: ‘Boris Johnson has promised lots of bridges in his career; so far to the best of my knowledge he hasn’t delivered any.’
Ian Firth, a fellow at the Institution of Civil Engineers, said it ought to be possible to build the bridge within 15 years.
He said there were a ‘ huge number of technical challenges but anything is possible if you throw enough money at it’.
It is thought that one of the designs could copy the style of the Oresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden, which uses a mixture of bridge and a 2.5 mile tunnel to span the water.
‘A proper piece of work’