Michael O’Leary’s letter in The Irish Times yesterday. Will Justine McCarthy reply and what will she say? We’ll see tomorrow.
Sir, – Unbelievable. Only an Irish Times columnist (with no known experience in transport) could waste her half-page column slagging off Dermot Desmond and myself for criticising the Dublin MetroLink, without once mentioning the projected cost of approximately €20 billion.
Being criticised by Irish Times columnists is always a great compliment. In what crazy country could we seriously consider wasting approximately €20billion of taxpayer money on a railway line, serving a narrow strip of the north Dublin population from Swords to St Stephen’s Green, all of whom are well served currently by bus connections? The cost/benefit of this insanity has never been published, because it cannot be justified.
Dermot Desmond’s transport view should carry significant weight, given his very successful rescue, redevelopment and sale of London City Airport for approximately $1 billion in 2006.
My own, (less?) humble view is based on almost 40 years’ experience of growing what is now the world’s largest passenger airline.
But sadly we are both guilty of “being rich”, so therefore dismissed by The Irish Times “experts”, who know so much more about transport.
I wouldn’t quibble with a MetroLink from Swords to St Stephen’s Green if it was free, but there are far better uses of taxpayer funds than this white elephant.
Muddled thinking, free of any cost/benefit analysis, such as that displayed by Justine McCarthy, is how you deliver a children’s hospital (which should have cost €200 million) at a final cost of €2.5 billion and rising.
My criticism of the MetroLink is based on the fact that very few passengers at Dublin Airport will ever use it. It takes passengers into St Stephen’s Green, so some small minority of inbound visitors might use it, but the vast majority of Irish-originating passengers, who need to get to Dublin Airport early in the morning, or are travelling to/from outside the D2/D4 area, won’t use it.
Dublin Airport is just 9km from the centre of the city, and is well served by competitively priced bus connections, which takes passengers to the city centre, and to points all over Ireland at low fares. These passengers won’t switch to a €20 billion metro.
Your columnist claims that I “opposed the second terminal at Dublin Airport in 2010”. I didn’t. Dublin needed a second terminal and I offered to build it on the north apron for just €200 million, as Ryanair had proposed. I simply pointed out that the Dublin Airport Authority(DAA) wasted €2 billion building Terminal 2 in the wrong place (a cul-de-sac) and with no ability to future expand.
Now that the second runway has opened on the north apron, the chronic congestion in the T2 cul-de-sac bedevils the T2 airlines on a daily basis.
I note Ms McCarthy failed to offer her opinion on the Dublin Airport second runway, a project which I also supported, yet which the airlines and our passengers are prevented from using by a 2007 (Road Traffic) Planning restriction.
We elected a new government last November which promised to remove this cap “as soon as possible”, which would enable the airlines at Dublin to grow traffic, new routes, tourism and jobs.
Sadly, eight months later, the Government has failed to take any action to scrap this cap. More inexcusable delay and inaction from our political class.
To summarise, both myself and Dermot Desmond believe wasting €20 billion on a Dublin Airport metro is an unjustifiable waste of scarce taxpayer funds. I object because the majority of Dublin Airport passengers won’t ever use this vastly overpriced service. Dermot correctly suggests that AI and electric road transport will solve the problem at a fraction of this €20billion over the next decade.
The fact that an unqualified Irish Times columnist considers that “two rich men” are wrong only renews my faith that this MetroLink is a mad, bad project.
Add some more buses to service the citizens of Swords, Ballymun, Collins Avenue, and Glasnevin, and The Irish Times could save Irish taxpayers (me included!) about €19.9 billion rather than squandering these funds, as we have on the world’s most expensive – and least efficient– Children’s Hospital.
If the next time Ms McCarthy wants to offer an opinion on government transport projects, perhaps she could address the cost benefit of the project, rather than slagging off two successful – albeit opinionated – business people.
We won’t always be right, but we will be right far more often than the misguided, anti-business Irish Times “chatterati”. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O’LEARY.
Chief Executive,
Ryanair,
Dublin.
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