The immense scale of the Metrolink project is underlined by the estimate from those managing it that it will require 8,000 people to build and that the initial estimate of the cost – €9.5 billion – is set to rise. This is a project on a different scale to anything else the State has built, which in itself brings risks. The international evidence is that practice in delivering major project leads to better outcomes. Experience counts - and Ireland does not have very much.
This raises an issue which need to be addressed in delivering Metrolink and the other parts of the major infrastructure programme outlined in the revised National Development Plan, going beyond the much-debated concerns about planning and funding. It is who is actually going to do all the construction work and where will they live ?
The Metrolink project director, Sean Sweeney, laid it out clearly at an Oireachtas committee on Wednesday. He said that the Irish construction industry did not have the scale or expertise to deliver the Metrolink “ and that is even without factoring in the other major infrastructure projects that are in play at the moment as well.”
The big international firms undertaking the project will use some Irish labour, but they will need to bring in many workers from overseas too. And this raises the obvious question: where are all the people who will come here to build major infrastructure projects going to live while they are doing the work?
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In the midst of a housing crisis – central to so many economic and social challenges – there are no easy answers, with political concern that homes which might otherwise have been available to Irish families may be used. And while the Metrolink project team is right to examine the options, the Government also has a role, particularly as many construction workers will also be needed for other parts of the major planned investment programme, including house building.
This has a number of important policy implications. The State needs to accelerate its efforts to help promote the growth of smaller and medium-sized Irish builders, to attract back Irish people working in relevant sectors overseas and to increase training in Ireland. Initiatives are underway in all these areas but a coherent strategy in the context of the infrastructure plan is needed. Thought is also required on the sequencing of major investments. Can everything be done at once?
And then there is the thorny housing issue. As the Metrolink promoters say, committing to take housing space not yet built may make some apartment projects viable. There are also suggestions of purpose-built accommodation being considered, which could later be repurposed. But, whatever happens, a plan is needed which goes beyond expecting people to land here and hoping for the best. This is a problem which is not simply going to solve itself.
