Full coverage: Metrolink

France is broke but can double the size of the Paris metro, while cash-rich Ireland faces another judicial review in Dublin. Are there any lessons to be learned?

The capital allocations in Budget 2026 simply confirm those in the National Development Plan. The Government’s challenge is “barriers to delivery,” Jack Chambers said.

Decades in the making, the airport’s second runway was delivered on time and on budget — only to be hobbled by passenger caps and night-flight limits. Ireland now faces calls for bigger projects like MetroLink without the same scrutiny. Why build it, if we won’t plan to use it?

Behind the battle over a new underground lies Dublin’s real transport dilemma: entrenched car dependency, generous parking perks, and resistance to congestion charges. The MetroLink risks distracting from reforms that could reshape the city sooner.

The latest iteration of the National Development Plan sets funding allocations first, leaving project prioritisation for later – except for three Dublin infrastructure mammoths.

Documents released to The Currency show the scale of work to remove PFAS-contaminated soil from Dublin Airport in 2023. It may be a lesson for TII as it faces similar issues for its planned MetroLink airport station.

PFAS-contaminated soil was recently discovered in areas of Dublin Airport close to where the transport agency plans to tunnel for the airport station as part of the long-awaited €9.5bn MetroLink project.

The €9.5bn metro is a key project under the National Development Plan. Internal project emails show that the recent discovery of PFAS-contaminated soil at Dublin Airport is proving problematic in getting the project through the planning system.

If an organisation can’t do its core job, problems will show up one way or another. Either it’ll make a poor quality product for a fair price, as is happening with Boeing. Or it’ll make a good quality product at massive cost, as happened with the National Children’s Hospital. 

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the future of the state’s finances, tendering to build and run the capital’s first underground rail system is ramping up.