The question is not whether there will be delays to key infrastructure projects, but how many and at what cost, Carol Nolan TD has said following the announcement of the departure of the MetroLink director.
Transport Infrastructure Ireland CEO, Lorcan O’Connor confirmed this afternoon that MetroLink Programme Director, Sean Sweeney will leave the role this summer.
Mr Sweeney, a New Zealand native, joined the project in 2024. In his outgoing statement, he cited the difficulty of long-distance life, which saw him separated from his family.
“Leading the MetroLink programme has been one of the greatest professional privileges of my career. However, after several years away from home, the sacrifice of being separated from my partner, children, and grandchildren, who are over 10,000 miles away, has become unsustainable,” Mr Sweeney said.
“It is with deep regret that I leave MetroLink, however, I know it is the right thing to do for everyone.”
Mr O’Connor said that an open competition for Mr Sweeney’s successor will begin “immediately”.
“In the interim, Michael Flynn (Deputy Programme Director) will step up to ensure MetroLink continues to progress towards delivery,” he said.
MetroLink is the long-awaited project to deliver Ireland’s first metro railway system, which is due to be located in Co. Dublin, to run between Swords and Charlemont.
Commenting on the development, Deputy Nolan said: “To the growing domestic realisation that we seem to have lost the capacity to deliver large scale infrastructure, we can now add a clear international dimension.”
“Indeed, while I am not querying the reasons he has provided, I do think that the unspoken subtext to this resignation is that not even an internationally acclaimed professional such as Mr Sweeney could bring order to the manifest chaos that is the Irish planning environment.
“In a larger sense, this is the inevitable outcome of successive governments tying the planning and building process into regulatory knots,” she said.
“Rather depressingly,” Ms Nolan said that the question now “is not if there will be more delays to key infrastructure projects, but how many and at what cost” to Irish people and to Ireland’s international reputation.