Rail line to Navan can not be allowed to stall now

CHRONICLE COMMENT: Two parties who have been advocating for link for decades are now in power together

“Change here for Trim and Athboy” was the mantra in Kilmessan village a century ago, at its very busy junction railway station. It was where the line from Navan/Kingscourt joined the line from Trim and Athboy on the Dublin-Meath railway which operated for the best part of a century.

The busy passenger, livestock, bloodstock and goods service operated from 1862 until its downgrading began in 1948, and as Ireland entered the bleak 1950s, with emigration rife and a shortage of passengers, as well as the advent of the motor car, ‘The Committee of Inquiry into Internal Transport’ chaired by DR JP Beddy, saw “no reasonable justification for the continuance of the railway undertaking.”

So CIE chairman Todd Andrews, with the backing of Sean Lemass, set about the greatest act of shortsightness in an effort to make the transport company break even – by closing down one third of the railway system by 1964 in his five year mandate to ‘cure or kill’.

One of the lines he killed was the Meath service, downgrading it to an excursion and big match train until the lines finally came up, only 60 years ago.

It has since become a political football, and two decades ago was the subject of a Fianna Fail-Fine Gael toing and froing between Noel Dempsey and John Bruton. Dempsey later became minister for Transport, and brought the project to Railway Order stage where it would have been ready for planning permission.

However, the economic recession meant that it got no further than the M3 Pace station in Dunboyne, and his promise that it would go ahead despite not being included in the 2010 revised capital spending programme rang hollow.

Over a decade later, and we are no further down the track, and seem to even have taken more than a step back.

The Taoiseach has denied that this week’s new National Development Plan is just a ‘wishlist’, but it is hard to see how the Navan Rail Line aspect of it is anything more than an aspiration.

The line in the plan relevant to Navan is: “A review of the Transport Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area is underway, and allocations provided under this NDP will allow for the commencement of planning and design of rail projects that might emerge from that review, including options for the proposed Navan rail line and DART Underground.”

Two words that jump out there are ‘review’ and ‘might’. There is a major hurdle yet to be crossed. This review by the National Transport Authority (NTA) has to be published, and it could go either way. If it decides population figures, environmental concerns, the growing popularity of remote working from home, or other factors, would make the project unviable, then it could recommend that the rail link to Navan doesn’t take place.

The two parties who have been advocating for this rail line for decades are currently in power together, so if they cannot make it work now, it will never happen. And if it fails, the NTA and its survey will be used to take the blame. It is up to the government to now make sure its might is used so that the NTA’s ‘might’ becomes a reality.