Funding to shorten train journey times between Dublin and Belfast to less than two hours is expected to receive Cabinet approval this week.
Spending on the Government’s Shared Island budget exceeds €1 billion and, in all, nearly €400 million in spending for 12 projects will be agreed by Ministers when they meet on Tuesday, just ahead of the fifth annual Shared Island forum in Dublin later this month.
The increasingly popular Enterprise Dublin-Belfast journey will be brought less than two hours by 2030 on foot of spending that will ensure the Enterprise can overtake Dart services.
Works will see upgrades on the railway track north of Malahide and at Clongriffin, though the spending will benefit plans to electrify 37km of the rail network from Malahide to Drogheda too.
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This work, covering Portmarnock, Malahide, Donabate, Rush and Lusk, Skerries, Balbriggan and Gormanston, will more than double peak-time services between Dublin and Drogheda from 11 to 24 trains.
The latest Shared Island funding will include a €35 million payment to Iarnród Éireann and the Belfast-based Translink to continue Dublin-Belfast hourly services, which has seen passenger number on the route jump by 40 per cent.
The latest projects “will continue the ambitious work already under way to further the reconciliation made possible by the Good Friday Agreement” for “a more connected, sustainable shared island,” the Government said.
The full details will not be released until Tuesday, but it follows Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s instruction to Ministers to add projects to the 35 currently under way, including the Narrow Water Bridge between Louth and Down.
The spending on the Derry-Belfast train line, which will improve long-criticised services by 2030, may attract the greatest attention, given that all of the Government’s money will be spent inside Northern Ireland.
In a statement, the Taoiseach’s spokesman said Shared Island “is an example of the Good Friday Agreement made real – practical work towards reconciliation of communities and traditions”.
The Cabinet memorandum, in the name of Martin and Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee, notes that spending on the Derry-Belfast line will also come from Northern Ireland’s department of infrastructure.
The latest round of funding for Shared Island comes just days after Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris announced that Fine Gael will produce a blueprint for unity by November.
Though Harris and Martin have not disagreed publicly, Martin has long believed that North-South ties are best driven forward by practical co-operation, shorn of constitutional ambitions.
[ New Belfast trains will cut travel times to Dublin to under two hoursOpens in new window ]
The New York-headquartered Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), like many within Fianna Fáil, has long been frustrated by the Taoiseach’s refusal to begin planning for Irish unity – something which he argues will drive unionists away from lower-level co-operation.
The order welcomed Harris’s move and pointedly noted the contributions made up to now by Harris’s Fine Gael predecessor, Leo Varadkar.
Varadkar’s remarks had advanced Irish reunification and the AOH hopes the upcoming Fine Gael blueprint due to be prepared by its Northern engagement group “will follow in that spirit”.
The 1998 Belfast Agreement acknowledged the right of Irish people to “exercise their right of national self-determination without external impediment”, though the timing of a referendum remains in the hand of the British Northern Ireland secretary of state.
Giving a British secretary exclusive power to deny a constitutional referendum, by simply refusing to acknowledge that a six-county majority might vote to live in a united Ireland is unacceptable, said the 150-year-old Irish-American organisation.
The refusal to announce the rules by which a referendum would be called “prevents meaningful steps towards reconciliation” since no unionist leader will engage in debate if Westminster refuses to accept that a referendum is possible.
“No unionist political leader will risk discussing guarantees of equal citizenship for his constituents in a united Ireland, while crown officials say there is no prospect of Britain allowing a Border poll on the horizon,” it said.
