Two excellent public meetings organised by Clare Daly TD and the Socialist Party were held in Swords on the subject of saving Metro North. The working meetings have agreed to launch a cross-community campaign to save this vital project which will bring urgently needed jobs and infrastructure to thousands of people throughout North Dublin.
The campaign – Yes to Metro North – has organised a committee and various plans are underway, including leafleting houses and shops, an online petition and Facebook campaign and a public rally to demonstrate the community’s support for the project.
At the second meeting, a representative from the Railway Procurement Agency outlined the current status of the project and the benefits it will bring to North Dublin and indeed the city as a whole because the Metro project is a crucial part of Dublin’s future infrastructure.
The line, which will run from Swords to Stephens Green in under 25 minutes, serving Santry, Ballymun, DCU, Drumcondra and others will bring 130,000 into the public transport system. The overall building of the project will create at least 25,000 jobs.
In the future, the Metro will link up with the Dart and Luas at strategic locations in the city to form the basis of the kind of sustainable transport infrastructure which Dublin will have to have. The project is also ultimately wealth generating and one study estimates that for every €1 invested in it, Metro will yield €2 to the state.
Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar, says that only one of the three planned infrastructural projects can go ahead. However, of the three, Metro North is the only one which has full planning permission, which has millions of euro already spent on preliminary works and which has funding in place to begin the first two years of work.
Metro North is exactly the kind of “shovel ready” project which the government say that they want to invest in in order to create jobs. There is no justification for it not to go ahead and that is why we feel that a concerted campaign, beginning in Swords, but hopefully encompassing other communities in North Dublin, such as Finglas, Santry and Ballymun, can put enough pressure for the Government to give the green light to the project.
The public rally for the campaign will be held on Monday 13 June at 5pm outside Fingal County Council Offices.
