Swords

Yeah

... to Swords, stuck in traffic, and so on.

And, and I know you do.

And-

There's so mu- much wider benefits.

So for example, you talked a, a moment ago about the central bank talking about our housing crisis and the time it takes to, to deliver housing.

This project alone will deliver 77,000 units directly, but when you look at the alignment overall and how it will act as a catalyst for housing, when you look at the potential for housing north of Swords, you're looking at hundreds of thousands of new-

77,000 houses

Metrolink, 19 kilometers of light rail, most of it underground, from Swords in North County Dublin via the airport to Charlemont in the south of the city.

Likely to be the most expensive public building project ever here, and today being brought to cabinet for approval to go to tender, with an estimated cost much higher than the last one, four years ago, of between €7 and €12 billion.

Martin Wall is Irish Times public policy correspondent.

If Cabinet approves the spend, MetroLink can take the next step to a detailed procurement phase, marking one of the biggest milestones in the history of the project.

Bids can then begin for the construction and operation of the 19km mostly underground route, which will link Swords and Dublin Airport to the city centre and Ranla.

Work could then begin next year, with MetroLink expected to begin operating in around a decade in the mid to late 2030s.

The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is delivering her State of the Union speech in Strasbourg this morning.

Now, to move on, it's thought to be the most expensive building project in the history of the state, but today the Metrolink took a significant step forward, linking Swords in North County Dublin to Charlemagne Street on the south side.

The project was first mooted a quarter of a century ago with a much lower price tag.

Today, however, the government approved the revised cost at around €16 billion, could be as much as €17.5 billion.

That's based on very detailed analysis within the business case that will be published this week.

But it's benchmarking how similar projects around the world have played out, learning from them, and also in terms of the benefits, identifying exactly what this project will deliver for the people of Dublin and wider afield.

And the kind of benefits we're talking about there are, You'll have a lot of people, for example, in the car right now trying to commute back to Swords, and that journey can take anything from one to two hours on occasions.

They will be able to commute city centre to Swords in less than half an hour.

If you're trying to get to the airport, you'll be able to do that in 20 minutes.

In that time, governments, deadlines, budgets and proposed routes have come and gone.

Today, the metro link from Swords in the north to Charlemont in the south has taken a step forward, but we've also learned that it will cost substantially more than estimated.

Lorcan O'Connor is the CEO of Transport Infrastructure Ireland and he's been speaking to our Eastern correspondent, Samantha Librairie.

There's no doubt that we are looking at higher costs.

And when you look back in the archives, as I did yesterday, it's really astonishing to see the amount of transport ministers that have been involved in this process.

It was Mary O'Rourke who first announced it in the year 2000.

In 2002, Seamus Brennan made a commitment that there would be a rail link between Dublin city centre and Swords by 2007.

It was Leo Varadkar as Transport Minister around 2011 that shelved the project.

Uh, there's a lot of people want that service out there, um, and we hope to, to work with the NTA on expanding that into the future.

Uh, now just a follow-up to that, is there any reason why there's only a few nighttime buses to North County Dublin? For instance, for instance, the night bus to Swords, but there's none to Luss, uh, Lusk, Rush, or Skerries.

Yeah.

Look, that's the reality.