MetroLink on track? Sadly there’s no ETA yet, says Ryan
NO target completion date for Dublin’s MetroLink will be included in the upcoming National Development Plan, Transport Minister Eamon Ryan has said.
The Green Party leader admitted that he couldn’t give a projected date for completion for the beleaguered underground train line project until it has gone through the planning process.
It comes after The Irish Mail On Sunday revealed earlier this month that the 2027 completion date for the MetroLink set out in the Government’s previous projections would not be met.
Sources revealed it could be 2034 before the major infrastructure project is finished.
Speaking to the Oireachtas Transport and Communications Committee, Minister Ryan confirmed that no completion date will be listed for the MetroLink when the Government unveils its revised NDP in Cork next Monday. In his questions to Mr Ryan, Sinn Féin TD Darren O’Rourke said that to hear there was still no target was ‘frustrating’ for the public.
‘I see it as a step backwards rather than a step forward. In fairness, if people have a date to work towards and now to not even have that, that will be frustrating,’ he said.
The Transport Minister said he will be able to give a target for completion once MetroLink passes through the planning process when the final design of the project is agreed on.
‘To give a date in advance of that, when we don’t have the final design of the project, it might be nice politically but it wouldn’t be honest or straight,’ he said.
The committee chair, Fine Gael TD Kieran O’Donnell, pushed the Transport Minister further on when he believed it could be completed, with Mr Ryan responding that he expected it to begin later than 2028 but hoped for it to be finonce ished before 2034. ‘I don’t expect it to run that late but it will depend on planning,’ he said. Mr Ryan referenced when the project previously hit a setback more than ten years ago, saying that a ‘planning delay killed it’.
‘I hate to come back to always answering this question by saying it depends on how long it takes us to get through planning, but that’s from direct experience of a project like that, which was ready to go, which we would have built for probably a fraction of what it’s going to cost us in the end but it was delayed in planning and legal challenges,’ he said.
Asked by Labour TD Duncan Smith if construction on the project will proceed quickly MetroLink goes through the Railway Order process and planning, Mr Ryan said: ‘Once we’re through that, I do expect to be able to press the go button, subject to Government approval and Cabinet agreeing. There isn’t a plan to delay.’
Meanwhile, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said yesterday he believed the Green Party leader was giving a ‘very realistic and honest appraisal’ of the timeline for MetroLink.
‘Given what happens within the planning process, inevitably all of the various steps that you’ve taken for such a significant public transport project, it’s going to take time inevitably. What’s important is, and in the context of the NDP, that we will be sanctioning in green-lighting projects for the long haul,’ he said.
‘Ten-year capital framework, and the NDP, which I think will give investors and those who want to engage in a project with this kind of confidence to engage and then will allow for Government to get value for money and be competitive in terms of cost of these projects.’
‘We don’t have the final design’ ‘Delayed in planning’