Minister insists Dublin-Navan rail line will go ahead

TRANSPORT Minister Noel Dempsey has continued to insist the second phase of the Dublin-Navan rail service will go ahead, even though there is no specific reference to the project in the Government’s revised capital spending programme.

However, Mr Dempsey accepted any successor to his office might decide not to proceed with plans to complete the line from the new M3 Parkway station to Navan.

“If other people don’t want to follow on, on that commitment if they get the opportunity, that will be their responsibility,” remarked Mr Dempsey.

He said Iarnród Éireann would seek planning permission from An Bord Pleanála for the second phase of the project next May. “Once it is completed, the money will be available to start construction through the capital programme.”

The minister was speaking as he travelled on a test run for the new Dublin-Dunboyne service.

“An awful lot of people said this wouldn’t happen. It’s the same problem with Phase II. It is going to happen. The money will come from the capital programme. There is no question or doubt at all about that,” he observed.

However, Mr Dempsey failed to respond directly to a suggestion that he had staked a lot of his own political reputation on delivery of the complete project.

The minister insisted that the Government’s capital spending programme contained references to funding for the Metro North and DART Underground project because they were the key rail infrastructure developments and were “hugely more expensive than the Navan rail line”.

Some observers believe a scarcity of funds combined with the opening of the M3 motorway and a park and ride facility near Dunboyne as part of the first phase of the project will remove the need for the second phase of the line.

Iarnród Éireann confirmed that the Dublin-Dunboyne commuter rail service will start in September. Construction of the 7.5km track, which branches off from the Dublin-Maynooth line at Clonsilla, is complete and test runs will continue over the next few weeks.

It will serve Dunboyne and the M3 Parkway station, a park and ride facility with 1,200 car spaces at the interchange with the M3 north of Dunboyne, as well as a station at Hansfield once an access road is built by a developer.

The Clonsilla to Navan line was closed in 1963.