In Portmarnock, a housing estate looks set to finally get a direct route to the DART station

To get from the Drumnigh Manor housing estate to Portmarnock DART station is a 20-minute wandering walk along narrow paths and through awkward busy crossroads.

“We have been forced to book taxis to get to both the station or into the city centre,” says Paul Mulshine, sat on a bench by the side of the road inside the estate. His son-in-law and daughter live on the estate, he said.

A shorter, more direct route should soon be available, say council officials.

Fingal County Council has started to clear long-standing barriers to refurbishing and reopening a bridge over the railroad tracks, to make the route much shorter and safer, said Laura Burke, a council engineer, at a meeting on 3 September.

Reopening the fenced-off bridge – which is owned by Irish Rail – would cut the route from the estate to the station down to maybe five or 10 minutes.

The council has struck a legal agreement with Shannon Homes, the landowner to the west side of the bridge, said Burke. So the council now has a right of way to access the bridge through the Drumigh Manor estate, she says.

Discussions with Evara, the landowner to the east of the bridge, about right to access have been progressing well, said Burke. And, the bridge-works licence with Irish Rail has been finalised and will be expected to be done shortly, she said.

“This has been a long time coming so it's great to see light at the end of the tunnel,” said Fianna Fáil Councillor Eoghan O’Brien at the meeting.

Joan Hopkins, a Social Democrats councillor, said by phone later that a new town has pretty much been built in Portmarnock, but on country roads with no footpaths and cycle lanes. 

It “makes it harder for this town of people to get easy access to the rest of Portmarnock”, she says – but the bridge should help to change that.

It’s mostly men who use the route at the moment, she says. “Now men, women and children will be able to use this route to access all the amenities in Portmarnock.”

“It's life changing,” she said.

Once the final legal agreements are signed off, and a contractor appointed and on site, the works should take just three weeks, said Burke, the council engineer at the meeting of the Howth-Malahide Area Committee.

A long-time coming

At the meeting, Fianna Fáil Councillor Cathal Haughey had put in a written request for an update on the bridge.

Which is, technically, “overpass railway bridge OBB21”, over the Dublin-Belfast rail line, according to the response from council engineer Linda Lally. 

It was “formerly used as a cattle pass”, Lally wrote. “The proposed improvement works involve re-surfacing the existing bridge deck with an SMA [stone mastic asphalt] surface and this will become a shared two-way footpath/cycleway.” 

At the meeting, Green Party Councillor David Healy mentioned how long it had all taken. 

“We will all be happy when we see it open, but it’s been a bit of a surprise that it’s taken this long,” he said.

When Shannon Homes applied more than a decade ago to add more homes on the big site west of the station, council planners asked about the status of the railway bridge and plans for that.

The path along Drunmigh Road is limited, said council planners, but there is the railway footbridge at one edge of the site. Was the developer planning to use this, as safe access to the DART station?

That was mentioned among the transport and connectivity plans laid out in the Portmarnock South Local Area Plan from 2013, it said. The council’s online planning database doesn’t seem to show what the answer was to that query. 

On 9 September, a spokesperson for Irish Rail said it was cooperating with Fingal County Council to finalise a licence agreement that will enable them to carry out fencing, cleaning works to the bridge, and add ramps to bring it up to a standard acceptable for the intended public use.

The next step is that once everything is agreed between land owners from the east side of the bridge, Fingal County Council, and Irish Rail, contractors will be appointed, according to a council spokesperson.

Mulshine says he thinks this is great news for his daughter. “My daughter currently can't drive, so a bridge like this will be a great way for her to get into Dublin.”

A direct bridge to the station makes it easier for people to get home from nights out too, he said. “A bridge like this will make it easier and cheaper for people coming home from a pub instead of booking an expensive Uber or taxi home.”

Hopkins, the Social Democrats councillor, said by phone that the bridge will make the roads safer for people too. 

“There was risks of both life and limb lost in the area, tragedies that could have happened, so this bridge will protect people into the future,” she said.

Said Hopkins: “I am hopeful now along with other councillors at this stage of proceedings that we will be cycling and walking over the bridge before Christmas.”