Only weeks before the expected opening of Dublin's port tunnel, it has emerged that port-bound trucks may stop using it within the first three decades of its operation. The tunnel, built at a cost of at least €775 million, has been designed to take trucks to and from Dublin port, but with plans to turn the port into a "Manhattan-style" residential area, its purpose is set to change.
The proposal for the port area also includes the construction of an "outer ring road" to bypass the city centre and the M50, which is currently being expanded to a three-lane road.
Under the Progressive Democrats-drafted plan, backed last week by the Taoiseach, the tunnel will be used by residents of a new port development, by commuters driving private cars and by buses running through the tunnel, servicing large park-and-ride facilities at each end.
It is proposed to move port activity north to a greenfield site at Breamore, near Balbriggan, Co Dublin, and redeveloping more than 600 acres of State-owned land for housing and office accommodation in the current port area. The phased 25-year redevelopment would include skyscrapers and be capable of supporting a population of more than 50,000 people.
On Friday the Taoiseach said he was "broadly supportive" of the plan. He said the question was whether to halt development in the port or take it further "moving 40,000 trucks per day" out of the area.
PD transport spokesman Tom Morrissey said the port tunnel would form an "integral part" of the new development, but that port-bound trucks would not be using it under the plan.
"You couldn't develop that area without a link to the M1 from it in any event, and a link to the airport. What we would be saying is, in time, with our master plan for the Dublin Port area, is that we would see the port tunnel as being a fast-track public passenger area and for cars, and that we would see a large park-and-ride at both ends of it," he said.
Asked if the tunnel, built specifically to take trucks off city streets, had therefore been a waste of taxpayers' money, he added: "It isn't as if the tunnel isn't going to be used for the port in the short term and the medium. This is going to be a gradual phased redevelopment."
But he said the tunnel had been "over-sold on day one" as a solution to trucks using Dublin city centre streets.
Even when it opens "it will still not do what it was proposed to do, which was to take the trucks off city streets. It will not take all the trucks out of the city".
He said large "supercube" trucks, which are too big to use the tunnel, could not be banned from Irish roads and would continue to use city streets.
"They're talking about imposing a ban, but industry will have a part to play in all of this," he said. "The engineers and the policy-makers will not admit that there was a massive error made in building the port tunnel at 4.65 metres. Those trucks are going to stay on our roads because we're a small island nation on the periphery of Europe that needs transport to Europe.
"The suggestion that you're going to ban them out of Ireland from a competitive point of view is just so ridiculous it's beyond belief."
Mr Morrissey said the development of a port in Breamore was dependent on the building of a new "outer ring road" and his party would be looking for its inclusion in the next National Development Plan (NDP). The new road would be built to bypass the M50, linking the new port to Navan, Maynooth and the N11. "The M50 as a ring road has become the North and South Circular Roads. This is part of the port plan, but it's not only about the port. It's about the eastern region."
He added: "We have to think outside the box. The template that we have used for Dublin has been a massive failure in relation to public transport and in relation to housing. It has forced people as far as the Shannon, and it has forced people as far as the Slaney to live."
