The Man Who Would Not Accept No for an Answer

James McMullan said it plainly in 1999: “The ferry is only a stop-gap service — a bridge is the answer.”

He was a former Ards Borough Councillor, speaking to the Belfast Telegraph after yet another attempt to privatise the loss-making ferry had collapsed. He cited the Skye Bridge as his model, noted that thirty years of subsidy could have paid for the infrastructure twice over, and announced he was forming a committee in Portaferry to push the case forward. On recent investigation, this committee never got off the ground. For another day !

The Department of the Environment responded in a single sentence: “There are no plans for a bridge. The cost would be prohibitive.”

That exchange took place twenty-seven years ago. The ferry is still running. The subsidy is still accumulating. And the department’s cost objections have since been shown — through Freedom of Information requests — to rest on figures its own officials described as “guesstimates”.

James McMullan was right. He simply did not yet have the evidence to prove it.

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This post tells his story, examines what he argued and why, and considers what he would make of where the campaign stands today.

[Special note: In the mid‑1990s, a major UK contractor – widely understood locally to have been Sir Robert McAlpine – came forward with a proposal to design, build and privately finance a high‑level bridge at Strangford Narrows, repaid through tolls, which would have taken the demand and revenue risk off government. FoI request submission has been made, to confirm that even 30 years ago, the private sector where interested in funding bridge via tolls if the Government derisked the scheme by providing the approach roads. As fate would have it, one is currently working with one of Northern Ireland’s largest and most experienced Building & Civil Engineering Contractors – what path is possible ?]

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