Dublin - Metrolink (Swords to Charlemont only)

There are currently 3 major potential obstacles, all with varying degrees of liklihood:

1. The railway order which has yet to be granted, it could possibly be denied or have a part of the scheme denied that would make project non viable

2. JR, we've seen that a JR can be allowed on virtually any basis and this has taken about a year to resolve on other projects. A JR could also be successful and can the project entirely

3. Government, the government could commission an 'alternative to ML' report and say that it'd not worth the money.

In terms of likliehood, ABP will almost definitely grant an RO but they could omit some part of the scheme e.g. the depot which would add years to the project to resolve as they done to DART+.

A JR is extremely likely and could hold things up for 1 year

Government is the million dollar question they could can it or built it, largely up to them. I think this is a 50/50 likelihood. It makes sense they proceed but it also made sense that they proceed on all predecessor projects from 1975 to 2025 and there's still no metro so make of that what you will.

Mr Sweeney mentioned this in his earlier interviews: The Metro North cancellation did hurt our reputation as a government that follows through on its tendering process. However, at least during that period, we were far from the only government who pulled the plug on megaprojects. A major part of his job is to show the potential bidders that the project is ready to build, and more importantly, that the government will start it. Once it has started, it will be completed.

Backing out now would be a major risk to the country - and not just for transportation. If we put this out for tender, then pull the plug again, it will mean that every future big infrastructure project we put out for tender will come back with a big fat “Irish government contingency” fee built into the tenders. It costs a lot of money to put together a tender of this scale - the construction costs absorb this as a cost of doing business, but if we get a reputation for not proceeding to construction, we will be the ones who end up paying.

was on the metro website for a look.
Have to say I quite like the artistic pics of the stops etc.

mainly though was wondering about the station before the airport-dardistown. Is that to open up that land for development? Industry or housing? I presume some industry. Don’t think there’s much in that bit of land currently

ah cheers makes sense, hadn’t really dug into it, was really just on their map that that station stood out as an oddity

Metro North had got to the point where two firms were asked to submit Best and Final offers (RPA selects two bidders for Metro North project – The Irish Times). This was in Summer 2009, at which point the financial crisis was already biting in other countries.

The decision to proceed with Metro North at this point in time was what gave us a bad rep. It gave bidders false confidence that the project was going to proceed despite the financial turmoil, but then the government at the time stalled and delayed for two years, adding ever more doubt and uncertainty to matters. Only the change of government in 2011 finally gave certainty on the project, when it was definitively cancelled.

The proper thing to do would have been to announce indefinite suspension of Metro North at the end of 2008, once the government became aware of the true cost of recapitalising Anglo Irish Bank and its fellow travellers. What they actually did was string bidders along for two years, at a time when projects were hard to come by.

The Sydney Metro had reached a similar stage and was cancelled in far worse circumstances. Australia / New South Wales had the fiscal and economic strength to go on with it but didn’t for political reasons (State vs. Federal nonsense). The project when revived a couple of years later with different politicians had no issue with getting tenders from similar consortiums.

This is being deliberately inflated here to put pressure on the Government because Sweeney has cleverly figured out what makes Irish politicians tick. And I’d add that if you’ve paid attention to Sweeney he has previously mentioned the cross party support for Metrolink here that is unique. He is of course aware of Australia but also New Zealand of how political infighting has killed projects (we have McDowell here for ours really). He is talking to Ireland as a whole, because he is familiar with how any project anywhere can be cancelled for any number of reasons. The route to getting this through here is to make it a point of national pride.

You'd have to hope that higher ups are hearing things about the railway order through the grapevine https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2025/0710/1522815-plenary-opens-new-dublin-office/

They could play a role in the PPP M500 Team which involves construction of systems, provision of rolling stock & operation and maintenance of the system. Loads of scope in there for the likes of Plenary to advise on this.

T&T, Mace and PwC are all on the Client Partner for Metrolink so TII is covered on that front.

https://www.metrolink.ie/en/news/procurement/dublin-metrolink-project-market-update-october-2023/#:~:text=4.,be%20adopted%20for%20the%20project.

I wonder how many weeks would be great to see some progress soon