Delayed Metrolink could cost as much as €12.3bn 

An artist's impression of the Tara Street entrance at night for the Metrolink rail project.

Ireland’s Metrolink could end up costing as much as €12.3bn, making it the country’s most expensive ever infrastructure project, according to projections by the state bodies responsible.

The rise in costs comes as the delivery of a railway order, the key infrastructure equivalent of planning permission, has been delayed until the end of 2024.

Some €116.9m has been spent on Metrolink to date as of the end of June, according to an annual progress report delivered to the Public Accounts Committee.

The majority of that expenditure, €54.2m, went on the design of a preferred route for the rail link, and on public consultations and the preliminary design of the route.

Metrolink is the most recent iteration of a planned subway link between Dublin city centre and Dublin Airport proposed in the early 2000s.

First approved in its current format in 2015, the northside section of the now 20km long route was fundamentally changed following an initial public consultation with affected locals in 2018 and 2019.

The progress report suggests that the overall cost of the project can be best estimated as between €7.2bn and €12.25bn, excluding VAT, with the latter figure representing likely inflationary costs.

By contrast, when Metrolink was first approved in its current format in 2018 its projected cost was €3bn, with a delivery timeline of 2027. Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) — which has primary responsibility for the project — admitted last year that date had been “probably optimistic”.

The wide range of the current budget estimates reflect “the uncertainties that exist in forecasting the outturn costs of mega projects that span over many years”, the progress report stated.

Costs 'expected to increase'

It said that costs for the project, which cannot break ground before its railway order is granted by An Bord Pleanála, are being reviewed and “expected to increase” ahead of the next stage of the public spending code process “in order to take account of the significant inflationary pressures experienced particularly in construction and the economy generally since 2021”.

Those pressures, the report said, include supply chain constraints and the “significant” increase in energy prices since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

MetroLink rail project: an artist impression of St Stephen's Green entrance.

The progress report lists the lodging of a railway order application by September 2022 as a “key milestone” which has been achieved in the project.

However, several of the project’s other milestone timelines have fallen behind schedule.

A project brief and procurement strategy submission has now been delayed from the second quarter of 2023 until the end of the year, pre-tender approval for the needed contracts has been delayed until the start of 2024, and most notably the timeline for receiving approval for construction from An Bord Pleanala has now been pushed out by nine months until the end of next year.

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That means that the absolute earliest construction could begin would be early-to-mid 2025, and more likely at least two years after that pending a procurement process to find a contractor, with the final project expected to be delivered via a public-private partnership (PPP).

TII acknowledged last year that Metrolink is unlikely to be in use before 2035 in a best-case scenario, with the information contained in the latest progress report likely to stretch that timeline out by at least a further 18 months into 2036 or 2037.

More than €250m has been spent on different iterations of the controversial project over the past 15 years — with at least €71m of that expenditure money for which no value has been returned, according to the National Transport Authority (NTA).