The National Transport Authority (NTA) has statutory responsibility for the development of public transport infrastructure in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA), including the new Metro North project.
The decision to proceed with new Metro North followed consideration of the Fingal/North Dublin Transport Study and the NTA's recommendations on the study, which identified the light-rail link as the optimum long term public transport solution on the Swords/airport/city centre corridor.
The Programme for Government includes a commitment to proceed with the new Metro North project and funding is provided in the Capital Plan "Building on Recovery Infrastructure and Capital Investment 2016-2021" to facilitate construction of the link commencing in 2021 with a view to delivery by 2026/2027.
The NTA, in collaboration with Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), are currently undertaking an option analysis and selection study of possible metro alignments and station locations. Arising from this work a final route and station configuration will be established. It is my understanding that the NTA and TII anticipate that this process will be complete by the end of 2017, after which a public consultation process will be undertaken in 2018. A preliminary business case will then be prepared and it is expected that the detailed business case would be developed in 2019.
Of the previous expenditure of €170 million incurred on the original Metro North Scheme, it is anticipated that a significant proportion of this investment will be of value in the finalisation of the new Metro North project; however, the extent of that will only be determined when the current option analysis and selection work has been progressed significantly.
