Public consultation on Dublin’s long-awaited MetroLink rail line is being reopened, almost five months after the An Bord Pleanála hearing on the project ended.
The planning board’s hearing on the €9.5 billion rail line from Swords to Charlemont, with 16 stops serving areas including Dublin Airport and the city centre, opened on February 19th and closed on schedule on March 28th.
However, with just two days to go before the end of the hearing, board inspector Barry O’Donnell said there would be a “requirement to re-advertise” the project due new information which had been submitted by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII).
TII, the State transport agency responsible for developing the 18.8km rail line, submitted close to 200 additional documents during the hearing, including 39 on the first day. Some of the documents were administrative and related to the running order of the hearing, while others dealt with agreements that had been reached with property owners along the line.
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However, several people who addressed the hearing had noted the introduction of what they felt was significant new information on the project by TII which they had not had the opportunity to consider before making their submissions to the board.
Mr O’Donnell said TII would be directed to make the additional material available for consultation “in due course” and anyone who had made submissions on the MetroLink application would have an opportunity to “comment in detail” on the new information. However, it would also be open to those who had not participated in the hearing to make submissions.
While it had been anticipated the board would issue TII with the notice within weeks of the end of the hearing, it was not until July 1st that it sent a letter to the agency directing it publish the additional information. It has taken another six weeks for TII to issue details of the information which will be available for inspection at a number of locations from August 19th to October 9th.
There were, TII said, “logistics associated with printing this volume of material and the delivery of it to the locations concerned, and this accounts for the period of time that has elapsed since receipt of ABP’s [An Bord Pleanála’s] letter in July”.
The new information includes updates on the ownership of land affected by the line, but also documents, aired during the course of the hearing, in relation to “the likely effects on the environment of the proposed railway works”.
Hard copies of the documents will be available to view or buy from August 19th at the board’s offices on Marlborough Street; Dublin City Council, Wood Quay; Fingal County Council, Swords; TII, Parkgate Street; National Transport Authority, Harcourt Lane; and Ballymun Library. The information is available online already at metrolinkro.ie.
When TII made its application to the board in September 2022 it anticipated a 12 to 18 month planning process, adding that if permission was then granted, the line would take six to eight years to construct. It has subsequently acknowledged that MetroLink will not be completed until after 2031.
Speaking before the hearing started, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan said he was confident the board would issue its decision on MetroLink by the end of this year. However, it was not then expected that public consultation would continue until October.
While it is open to members of the public to request a reopening of the oral hearing, it is more likely the board will chose to consider additional submissions in writing only.
TII said the letter from the board “does not indicate if the hearing might be reopened. It only confirms the duration of this second round of public consultation”.
It added: “The timeline for the delivery of Metrolink is reliant on the project successfully navigating the statutory planning process.”
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