Over €150m spent on MetroLink project to date, PAC told

More than €150 million has been spent on the MetroLink project, up to the end of 2023, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The Public Accounts Committee heard that to date €158m has been spent although “no significant physical work” has taken place.

Hugh Creegan, deputy CEO of the National Transport Authority, said that the money had been mostly spent on “design, investigations, planning processes and so on”.

“The next stage is an intensive stage to prepare the tender documents and procurement,” he added.

He estimates that it will cost “between €100m and €200m to get all the contracts”.

Asked by committee chair Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley if the cost could be in the region “of €300m before we get going”, Mr Creegan agreed that it was “the kind of order we could be talking about”.

A recent estimate put the total cost of constructing the project, which will run from north of Swords to the Grand Canal in Dublin city centre, at €9.5 billion.