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Bertie Ahern sees votes Tunnelled
Read more about: Dublin Central, Fianna Fail, Transport
It would seem that all is not well in Bertie Ahern’s backyard of Drumcondra. Ben reports on school problems and another story breaking there in the last few days is the re-routing of the Metro and who knew what when.
The Railway Procurement Agency have altered the route for Metro North. Originally due to go under the sports grounds at St. Patricks College, the RPA have now decided to alter the route to go under a large area of densely populated housing about half a mile from Bertie’s office in St. Lukes in Drumcondra. Think tunnels here - think subsidence - think port tunnel horror stories, think people changing who they vote for. This morning whilst in the constituency I saw some of the paperwork swamping the area in the last 48 hours.
Local residents were not informed of this change and now believe that they would not have found out about the changes until after the General Election. Last night Fianna Fail ’swat’ teams were seen sweeping the area distrubuting hastily printed leaflets from An Taoiseach indicating that he did not know anything about the route change until Monday 30th April and attaching a note from the RPA which did not really say anything new or explain the route change in plain english. Many locals do not believe Ahern’s pleas of ignorance due to the nature of his reaction and others point to the the fact that the decision had been taken by the RPA some time before and kept quiet specifically not to engage resident opposition before the election. Either way Ahern is embarrassed - a few weeks ago he had copies of his Central News publication distributed outlining and endorsing the old route, now he looks like he does not know what was being planned for the area or was hiding it because he knew it would cost him votes.
A meeting of the many residents concerned taking place tonight will be somewhere a few journalists might be interested in attending. The surplus for transfer is slipping away?
In national terms this issue pairs well with the M3 fiasco, as the NRA was warned repeatedly about the risks of being so close to Tara, rammed it through anyway, and now has to suspend that portion of the project.
Jeepers that is not something that the residents of Dublin Central will be happy with. The port tunnel got them into some trouble in coolock and i doubt they want that again.
Opposition and indpendents will be all over this like flies on the old proverbial. Transfers coupled with a strategy of three runners is likely to do a bit of damage if this keeps trundling.
a Lovely big field at the back of St. Pat’s college not being used for metro? Could it be that since the Taoiseach lands his helicopter there he cant possibly be upset by the possibility of trains running under that land. P.S. anyone knows what’s going to happen to St. Pat’s fields- more exorbitantly priced matchbox apartments perhaps???