Updated / Wednesday, 23 Jul 2025 20:15
Michael O’Leary, Group Chief Executive of Ryanair Holdings, has described the proposed Metrolink rail service in Dublin – that would also serve Dublin Airport – as a waste of money.
He likened the estimated €20 billion cost to “ten children’s hospitals” and says the project is “completely uncosted.”
Mr O’Leary said the Government allocated in the National Development Plan €2bn “for just the tendering process”.
He said the cost of the 18km project works out at around €1bn per kilometre.
“Dublin Airport doesn’t need it, Dublin Airport passengers won’t use it, they’re already well served by buses,” he said on RTÉ’s Drivetime.
He said contrary to popular belief, people using Dublin Airport are all not “going to St Stephen’s Green”.
“90% per cent of the traffic is going to suburban Dublin and down the country.
“They’re very well served by the existing bus capacity, which counts for about 30% of Dublin’s traffic.”
Mr O’Leary said the Tube in London delivers only 16% of the passenger traffic to Europe’s busiest airport, Heathrow, “and the Tube serves all of London”.
The “massively expensive” Metro, he said, will serve a “narrow corridor from Swords in through the airport in through Glasnevin, serving a couple of hundred thousand people”.
“And we are wasting billions of taxpayers money on a airport train that nobody is going to use and that we don’t need,” he said.
He claimed that the Government “cannot be trusted,” accusing it of already breaking an election promise that it would remove the passenger cap at Dublin Airport.
He said no-one is willing to state publicly the likely eventual cost of Metrolink, which Mr O’Leary predicted will “easily exceed €20bn.”
He also accused Sean Sweeney, the New Zealander who was appointed Project Director of Metrolink last year, of “not knowing what he is talking about.”
Mr O’Leary said that a twentieth of the money – €100m – would pay for 400 buses which “do the same job” as the Metro, a project he said Ireland “cannot afford.”
