Opening of the Dublin Port Tunnel
I am very pleased and indeed proud to be here with you to declare open for business the largest single infrastructure project this State has ever undertaken. This undertaking is the outcome of more than ten years of vision and effort which began long before the first spade was set in the ground.
The concept of the Dublin Port Tunnel was part of the strategy which emerged from the Dublin Transportation Initiative, published in 1995. At the time, the Dublin Transportation Initiative and the strategy it produced was regarded by many people as just the latest in a long line of ambitious plans which would simply gather dust on the shelves. This plan, however, was actually implemented. Along with the Port Tunnel, it included the construction of a ring motorway and the development of a completely new rail-based transport system, known to us today as the M50 and the LUAS. We were told that it could not be done, should not be done and that, if it was done it would not work.
Well, there are some problems with the M50, but can anyone imagine what it would be like if the M50 was not there? Those problems are being tackled in a determined way and we will see very significant improvement as the increased capacity comes on stream. The same applies to the LUAS, where the only complaint is that there is not enough of it – not to worry, there is more coming as we press ahead with a number of projects to extend the LUAS.
Today we see the culmination of what was probably the most challenging element of the DTI Strategy – a twin bore, two lane motorway tunnel linking Dublin Port to the country’s rapidly growing motorway network. Dublin Port is the biggest single distribution centre in the country. The tunnel represents a massive improvement in the ability to move goods into and out of Dublin Port.
In the past few years, we have opened many new roads and other transport and infrastructure projects, and they are all important and valuable, both at local and national level. Today, however we have something on a different order of magnitude, something we have never done on this scale before.
Apart from some initial development funding from the European Union, practically the entire €751 million project cost has been funded by the Irish taxpayer through the National Roads Authority and the National Development Plan.
The tunnel has been project managed by Dublin City Council, and constructed by an international consortium involving Irish, British and Japanese contractors. John Fitzgerald, the former Dublin City Manager, on whose watch this project came to fruition, used to say it was “like the united nations”, so diverse was the workforce deployed at Fairview and Whitehall and all the underground locations in between.
The opening of the Dublin Port Tunnel will enable almost two million truck trips each year to access the motorway network directly, instead of using the narrow streets of the city centre and the inner suburban residential areas. After a short bedding in period, the management plan will be implemented on 19 February, which will take the very heavy trucks off these streets. This will facilitate the introduction of traffic calming and it is something people in those areas have been looking forward to for a long time. It will improve the whole environment of the city centre and will contribute significantly to the rejuvenation of the area which is currently under way.
Ireland has undergone massive change even since the tunnel project was first mooted, just over ten years ago. Irish people used to emigrate to Britain and the United States, or even further, to Australia and other far flung places, to work on great construction projects, from the London Underground to the trans-continental railway lines of North America, the Sydney Opera House or the Motorways of England.
Today, as we face into the twenty-first century, we are building twenty-first century infrastructure, and world class infrastructure at that, in our own country, for our own people, with our own resources.
Five thousand people worked on the site here, over the period of the tunnel’s construction. They built four and a half kilometres of twin bore tunnel, and another kilometre of cut and cover. They built three new bridges, shifted two million tonnes of clay and rock, and planted forty thousand trees and shrubs. They put in eight million working hours, and they did it all with an exemplary health and safety record. That in itself is a priceless achievement and a great credit to the planners, the managers and the workforce.
Today is an important milestone in the development of Ireland’s transport infrastructure. It is also a major demonstration of the energy, the confidence and the capability of the Irish people to rise to a challenge. We are all entitled to feel proud of this achievement and we will go on to achieve more – as evidenced by the major investment programme underway now with Transport 21. I am delighted, therefore, to declare the Dublin Port Tunnel open to traffic.
ENDS