Green councillor marks 1000 days of MetroLink with an anniversary cake outside An Bord Pleanála office

Today, Thursday 26 June, marks 1000 days since the railway order application for MetroLink was submitted to An Coimisiún Pleanála (formerly known as An Bord Pleanála) for approval in September 2022. Cllr Feljin Jose marked the occasion by cutting a special MetroLink-themed cake to highlight the long delays for critical infrastructure in our planning system. 

Cllr Feljin Jose, Spokesperson for Transport for the Green Party, said:

“Today marks 1000 days since Transport Infrastructure Ireland submitted the railway order application for MetroLink An Bord Pleanála. The 10,000 page application was rolled in on a trolley in September 2022. An Bord Pleanála has a statutory objective to make a decision within 18 weeks after the public consultation. 1000 days later, we still don’t have a timeline for when it will be approved.”

Green Party leader Roderic O'Gorman TD said:

“The Government can’t hope to be able to deliver the badly-needed large scale public transport, housing and renewable energy projects over the coming years without fixing the bottleneck at An Coimisiún Pleanála. To be able to have enough planners to deliver future projects like Cork Luas, Navan railway and the Western Rail Corridor, the recruitment needs to start now. It’s a highly skilled discipline which requires years of education and training and is critical for our society. The Minister for Housing, who is in charge of planning, needs to outline how the government is going to resolve this bottleneck.”

Cllr Jose added: “Dubliners are increasingly frustrated with how long MetroLink is taking to deliver. While the Government, the opposition and the general public seem to want it built, it is still moving at snail’s pace. The cost of congestion in the Greater Dublin Area is projected to increase to €1.5 billion per year by 2024. Every day this goes on, we’re losing money. In the Business Post today, Prof. Brian Caulfield from Trinity College projected “€700,000 per day in transport user benefits being lost” every day we don’t build MetroLink.”