Engineering is the easy bit as MetroLink now needs to work on public confidence

Newlyweds have emerged to have their first photos as a married couple taken on the front path, flanked by lawns, vibrant green with fresh growth.

Children in first communion clothes have darted about the shrubs in giddy excitement.

Mourners have gathered for the final journey of neighbours and friends, their whispered chatter echoed in the breeze rustling the leaves of the small trees.

And then there’s Fr Bernard, the late parish priest, who has reposed peacefully in his grave in the grounds of the church he loved so well for the past 37 years.

The plan to plonk a metro station in the midst of all this is not going down well.

For the army of engineers assembled by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) each day in the function room of the Gresham Hotel at An Bord Pleanála’s planning hearing into MetroLink, the upset over Our Lady of Victories Church in Glasnevin is a lesson no lecture hall could teach them.

They can precisely quantify depth, weight, pressure, gradient, vibration and noise, but getting the measure of public sentiment is a different skill entirely.

They have produced copious figures to justify locating the proposed ­Collins Avenue metro station in front of Our Lady’s.

They have promised even more planting and sensitive landscaping than already exists and provided assurances that Fr Bernard will not be disturbed.

They have presented detailed artists’ impressions of what the station will look like and how it will blend with the streetscape.

But still, there’s anxiety and unhappiness among the residents.

“Nobody wants their deceased family members entering the church from a crowded car park instead of the nicely landscaped front gardens,” says one of the many submissions on the subject.

“Also, the current proposal would deny brides the use of the church steps for their wedding photos.”

It’s a feeling that extends across the road from the proposed location to Our Lady of Victories infant and primary schools.

With a 10-year construction timetable, it is argued that children entering junior infants on year one will spend their entire primary school career surrounded by grinding, growling machinery; ugly hoarding and endless disruption.

It’s not that the residents don’t want MetroLink – but they do want the station moved 500 metres down the road to Albert College Park.

However, there’s already a smaller piece of work planned for the park – an intervention shaft for ventilation and emergency access to the tunnel beneath – and other local residents have particular concerns about that.

One lives close by in a house that is a protected structure with windowpanes that are – by necessity to preserve the architectural integrity of the intricate frames – single glaze and vulnerable to vibration.

There will be enough distance between house and tunnel to protect it from impact, the engineers said.

The homeowner wasn’t convinced.

We’ll monitor continuously and bring in a specialist conservation architect to assist, the engineers offered.

The homeowner wasn’t appeased.

The engineers must have been imagining what it would be like to be the men who built the most ambitious public transport project the state has seen but were remembered for cracking protected windowpanes.

There’s another issue. Regardless of which of the sites Collins Avenue ­Station ends up inhabiting, it has the wrong name, the hearing was told.

At the church end, it is fronted by Ballymun Road, not Collins Avenue which runs to its side and for several kilometres past, all the way to Killester.

An unsuspecting tourist could alight at Collins Avenue Station expecting to be within shouting distance of the sea and instead find themselves very much landlocked and lost.

The engineers took notes. This, their expressions suggested, was one complaint they could remedy with relative ease.

The presentations by residents and residents’ groups in this one neighbourhood in north Dublin about just one section of MetroLink serve as a microcosm of the issues the project is raising right along its 18.8km chosen route and around its 16 proposed stations.

There are fears for damage to property, anxiety about loss of local amenities and deep dread about the scale of the disruption that will have to be endured during construction.

Dublin is a city that has been dug up for the Port Tunnel, dug up for the Luas, dug up again for Luas cross-city, dug up for cycle lanes and Bus Connects and dug up repeatedly for the endless repairs and maintenance required on the waterworks, gas pipes, electricity lines and telecoms cables that snake and coil and multiply beneath the surface.

Most of those who have appeared at the hearing so far don’t object to MetroLink.

Few would disagree that the traffic-choked city is crying out for additional public transport.

But they are struggling to see beyond the headaches it will cause to the prize it could be.

The prospect of a decade of construction is chipping away at the foundations of their tolerance.

Labour Senator Marie Sherlock tried to make clear that there was no contradiction in holding mixed feelings about the project.

She was passionate about it, eager for work to begin and optimistic about the benefits it would bring her north ­Dublin neighbourhood, she said.

Most of her neighbours felt the same, she added, but they also had concerns and chief among them was that TII wasn’t listening.

She took issue with the categorisation of loss of footpaths and cycle lanes during construction as a slight impact and sought guarantees that TII would revisit some of its proposed traffic management arrangements.

It took her multiple attempts to ­extract assurances from TII that all claims for household damage from construction would get a fair hearing and that homeowners with claims beyond the current set limit of €45,000 would not automatically face exclusion and an expensive trip to court.

The hearing has five weeks to go and assurances will be required on many issues.

Some will be hard to provide, such as those sought by economist Colm McCarthy.

He was brought in by Senator Michael McDowell, who informed the hearing he lived precisely “three eighths of a mile” from the proposed southernmost station at Charlemont, to question the cost estimates of the project.

They were once €3bn, are now €9.5bn, were cited by Mr McCarthy as €11.9bn and could, with inflation and unforeseen events, soar to over €20bn.

TII are looking for assurances themselves. Two days into the hearing, they went to tender on a €1.6m contract for additional ground investigations.

“In order to develop a sufficient level of confidence in the ground conditions, there is a requirement to further supplement the ground investigation data collected to date via 65 additional geotechnical investigation boreholes at key locations along the MetroLink alignment,” the tender document explains.

But others could be, and need to be, given swiftly and firmly.

Such as, whatever we do at Ballymun Road, we’ll make the grounds of Our Lady’s the most beautiful a city church could ever aspire to.

Dubliners have survived past digging, forgiven past damage and, if MetroLink gets approval, they’ll put up with a lot again.

Just don’t ruin the wedding photos.