Two rich men think MetroLink is a waste of money. One owns a jet. The other operates an airline. Neither lives in Dublin and both are as likely to be seen on a double-decker bus as is the lesser-spotted woodpecker.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, who bought a taxi plate to dodge the traffic jams, has predicted that no one will use MetroLink to get from the city centre to Dublin Airport because “there’s nowhere to park” in St Stephen’s Green. The airline chief executive says existing bus services are perfectly adequate to ferry bums on to his no-frills seats. His utterances show a sweeping disregard for the tens of thousands of residents along the proposed rail line who need to get to places – schools, hospitals, offices – other than his departure gate. Besides, what eejits leave their cars parked near a bus stop while they go frolicking for a fortnight in Fuerteventura?
No sooner had dial-a-quote O’Leary spoken than the ante was upped by Dermot Desmond. The billionaire who has not been tax-resident in Ireland for many years flies around the globe in his private plane. Unlike jet-operator O’Leary, jet-setter Desmond tends to shun the limelight, so it is newsworthy when he makes a pronouncement about the public interest. Forget about MetroLink, he has advised, the robots are coming. AI is the future and it is going to make cars that drive themselves all the rage, he predicts, rendering the multibillion-euro rail project redundant. Neither man seems to appreciate that ditching the car is a prime objective of an integrated public transport network.
How many MetroLink passengers can you squeeze into a taxi? Answer: Not nearly enough, even if you stuff a few into the boot. If MetroLink’s self-drive trains will be able to carry 20,000 passengers an hour, as is promised, Dublin will need as many robocabs as there are hours in a year to match that capacity. Most of the city’s streets are already clogged and, with the city council designating some of them salubriously traffic-free, where will all those taxis converge? Desmond’s vision would certainly transform the capital – into a massive car-charging warehouse.
READ MORE
There is a tang of Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake” from O’Leary’s and Desmond’s interventions. Not that they are merciless men – they might be the nicest you could meet – but the expertise they presume to possess only shows how little they know about life for the 99-percenters. Their rationale is predicated on commercial calculations. Everyday experience informs the wisdom of the great majority who have greeted news of the National Development Plan’s €2 billion starter budget for MetroLink with a weary and footsore: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
O’Leary’s preference is to continue with the current restricted choice between driving to the airport or taking one of the commercially-operated coaches. A one-way fare quoted on the Dublin Express website for a journey from the airport to Heuston Station is €9. It costs €12 return with Aircoach to get from O’Connell Street to Terminal 1. That’s €24 for a couple, nearly €50 for a family of four adults, and more than it is possible to save by bringing your own sandwiches and opting to sit on the co-pilot’s lap for your Ryanair flight to Wroclaw. Or you could just get drenched in the rain while waiting to join the sweating crush on the Dublin Bus route and arrive sniffling and spluttering in Santa Ponsa. Most people cannot afford a chauffeur to bring them here, there and everywhere.
Such privations are unlikely to be your concern when you run an airline whose least consideration is the passenger’s comfort. O’Leary wants the Government to stop “agonising” over the environment and lift the 32 million passenger cap at the airport but he brooks no justification for building a metro line to facilitate all those passengers trying to get there.
Ireland has a habit of presuming that people in boardrooms know best. A most egregious example was when the economy crashed in 2008. Ghost estates and suicides were blotting the country while the government wined and dined the Global Irish Economic Forum in Farmleigh. Wall-to-wall CEOs and wealthy entrepreneurs were entertained at the All-Ireland football final in Croke Park, a banquet in Dublin Castle and a reception in Áras an Uachtaráin. The big solution they came up with was to “monetise” the arts.
In 2021, the Oireachtas transport committee, which solely comprised 13 male TDs and senators, published its submission for a review of the National Development Plan after receiving 10 witness statements from experts, all of whom were men too. The lads in Leinster House and the esteemed boardrooms were astonished when a subsequent report called Travelling in a Woman’s Shoes recorded that 55 per cent of women surveyed were too frightened to use public transport at night.
This may be stating the blindingly obvious but rich men are not always right. Twenty years ago, Ryanair’s chief executive objected to the Dublin Airport Authority building a second terminal. He wanted it done by the private sector instead. Threatening to sue the State if it went ahead, he accused then taoiseach Bertie Ahern of not wanting “to upset his friends in the unions” and said “the Siptu tail is wagging the Bertie dog”. More than 100 million passengers have passed through Terminal 2 since it opened 15 years ago; a factor cited by those now lobbying for the cap to be removed.
Any time an infrastructure development that would benefit the public is mooted, there are objections. Thus it was with the electrification of the Dart line, the M50, Monsignor’s Horan’s “foggy boggy” airport in Knock and the national children’s hospital. Brendan Behan said the first item on republicans’ agenda was always the split. The first one on the planning agenda is always prevarication. Constantly postponing decisions only adds to the current chaos and the final bill. Had construction of the mostly subterranean metro commenced when government first proposed it 20 years ago, Dubliners and visitors to the capital would be able to traverse it now without requiring a PhD in logistics.
We have heard the businessmen’s views. Can we now listen to the real experts crammed into buses and get on with building the MetroLink?
