The Workers’ Party have welcomed the commencement of work on the new Luas extension in Dublin which will link up the existing Red and Green lines but the party said that the real missing link in the system is the originally planned line to Ballymun and Dublin Airport.
Party spokesman Jimmy Dignam said that the original Luas Phase 2 was to be a line running from Ballymun to the City Centre and on to Dundrum and Sandyford. Only the southside leg of this line had been built and the Ballymun-Dublin Airport extension had been scrapped in favour of a yet unbuilt metro link.
Luas – Northside-Airport line the missing link
“At every turn in the development of Luas the most consistent element has been the abandonment of the link to Ballymun and the Northsde of the city proper. Every few years the proposal is dusted down and reused as an election carrot but is quickly shelved and forgotten again”, said Mr. Dignam.
“It is now forty years since the Workers Party first raised the call for light rail for Dublin”, Jimmy Dignam stated. “It is 21 years since the Dublin Transportation Initiative produced a plan for it and 11 years since the first section of Luas opened. Still the people of Ballymun are waiting while Dublin remains one of the very few capital cities in Europe without a direct rail link to its airport”
“The failure to bring the Luas to Ballymun has already caused the area to lose out. The availability of a rail or metro link was was a key element in the Ballymun Regeneration Plan and its non-implementation has meant some of these integral facilities have not materialised put the success of the plan as a whole at risk”
The Workers’ Party spokesman concluded, “While today’s anouncement is to be welcomed and will be a great asset to the communities it serves, it is of no comfort to the huge population areas on the Northside of the city who see their communities left behind once again. It is to be hoped that the next announcement will not be just another election gimmick but a commencement of work that is many decades behind time”, said Jimmy Dignam.