'Impossible to give firm date' for Cork's €185m metropolitan rail line
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No firm date can be put in place for the recently announced €185m Cork metropolitan rail line, with various cost and planning hurdles to get through first.
That is according to Transport Minister Eamon Ryan who was speaking in Cork on Monday ahead of the Government's National Development Plan (NDP) announcement.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin described the €185m plan as a "game-changer” for the county when it was announced in June as part of the €1bn recovery plan, with a commuter line from Cobh to Midleton to Mallow planned, running through Kent Station, and new stations at Tivoli, Blarney, and Kilbarry.
The June plan also said there would be 30,000 houses zoned around the stations.
However, Mr Ryan said on Monday that he could not give a definitive timeline because of the vagaries of the Irish planning system, as well as wanting to keep a lid on potential project costs spiralling.
"That line from Midleton to Mallow, new stations, housing going beside the stations, just shows how we can tackle the housing crisis, the climate crisis at the same time.
"You have to be careful, I didn’t want to go down the route of it's going to cost exactly this and built exactly then. Firstly, you don’t want to be telling the people who are bidding how much we are willing to pay – you want that bit of competitive tension. Also, being honest, it takes a long time to get through the Irish planning system.
"So when you start, how long it takes to a certain extent depends on that, and whether you are subject to legal challenge or not. The time when you really know what the cost and the timelines are going to be in when you have been through the planning system, when you know when it is going to tender, here is exactly what we want to build, then you can give very accurate projections in terms of cost and timelines," he said.
Mr Ryan ruled out the decades-long Dublin Metro saga being replicated in Cork.
Dublin Metrolink, the largest-ever State infrastructure project, will not be concluded by 2027 and could be delayed by up to seven years, he conceded last month.
In Cork, he said: "I’ve been working on the [Dublin] Metro for 25 years. It [the Cork metropolitan rail] won’t be 25 years, or anything like it. This entire NDP we are going to build as quick as we can because the public transport projects are critical to solving the housing crisis.
"What we want is transport-led development, where you put the housing in beside where the high-quality public transport is. That’s why is it important. We are really ramping up housing expenditure, especially in the next five years. The second half of the decade the public transport project will really kick in."
He said the northside of the city, which has been long neglected in favour of other parts of Cork, according to local activists in the area, would be key in the metropolitan rail line.
"Putting a new station in Tivoli, that’s where we need the housing. Putting new stations on the section through the northside of Cork out towards Blarney and Monard and beyond, that’s where we need new housing.
"The development plans that are going to happen now in Cork need to signal to the developers is that is where we build new communities, really high-quality around a railway station that is going to have a 10-minute service, as good as the Dart."