BORIS’S BORE!
Tunnel, not bridge ‘to link Scotland and Northern Ireland... in 10 years’
BORIS Johnson is to step up plans for a ‘Union tunnel’ linking Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Prime Minister now favours an underwater crossing rather than a bridge, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack revealed yesterday.
Mr Johnson is expected to announce a feasibility study to determine the costs of the project, which has been dubbed the ‘Union tunnel’ by Whitehall because it will help to strengthen the links between all the nations of the UK.
Mr Jack claimed the tunnel could be completed within ten years and would stretch from Portpatrick in Wigtownshire to Larne – a route of more than 25 miles.
Yesterday, he told Holyrood’s Europe Committee yesterday: ‘It’s no different to the tunnels connecting the Faroes, it’s not different to the tunnels underneath the fjords, and it deals with the problem of Beaufort’s Dyke and the World War Two munitions.’
Mr Johnson has already made clear his interest in building a bridge linking Scotland and Northern Ireland and suggested it could cost £15billion.
But Mr Jack yesterday warned that wind could force a bridge to close up to 100 times a year, meaning that a tunnel is a more viable alternative.
He said a combination of bridge and tunnels was ‘possible’ but the ‘best solution’ is a tunnel, adding that a number of engineers had said this would cost less than a bridge.
Mr Jack said: ‘The next step will be a full feasibility [study] but that is for the Prime Minister to announce.’
Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Arlene Foster, is said to be ‘very enthusiastic’ about the idea.
Mr Jack said it would be ‘quite achievable’ to build the tunnel by 2030 because costs have come down and techniques have improved since the Channel Tunnel was built. He added: ‘It will be very good for the Northern Ireland economy, it will also be very good for the economy of south-west Scotland. It will also link Glasgow and Carlisle to Belfast in quite a different way to the present arrangement. It is a great strengthener of the Union to link the four nations.’
Any crossing would also require upgrades to the A77 road linking Glasgow with Portpatrick and to the A75 route between Gretna and Portpatrick.
Road infrastructure is devolved. Even if the UK Government handed over extra cash to upgrade roads, it would be up to the Scottish Government to decide whether to press ahead with the investment.
Nicola Sturgeon has previously suggested that she would prefer money for a crossing be handed to the Scottish Government.
Yesterday, the First Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘Have they investigated what type of rock it is? Have they investigated how easy it is to tunnel that compared to the type of rock found when they were doing the Channel Tunnel decades ago?
‘It would be a gigantic undertaking which nobody has yet, from an engineering point of view, come forward to say, “Yes, this is feasible”.
‘A bridge or tunnel in that part of that world, to that scale, that magnitude, would be a colossal undertaking. I’m not sure the viability has been confirmed.’
A spokesman for Boris Johnson said: ‘Work is being carried out to look at this project.
‘The Prime Minister has always been clear that we should be ambitious in our plans for infrastructure across the country.’