11 Jun 2026

Introducing the Strangford Lough Crossing Public Debate

A new public forum for open questions, evidenced answers, and a fair hearing for the case for a fixed crossing of Strangford Lough.

Click on image above for access to forum.

By Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS, QUINTIN QS — 11 June 2026

For the past two years I have been doing the work that, in my professional view, the Department for Infrastructure should have done a decade ago: a proper, evidence-based feasibility appraisal of a fixed crossing of Strangford Lough.

That work — the interactive feasibility dashboard, the diversion heatmap, the cost-benefit analysis built to HM Treasury Green Book and DfT TAG standards — was always intended as a starting point, not a finishing line. The whole purpose of putting numbers and sources on the table was to invite scrutiny.

Today I am opening up that scrutiny to anyone who wants to take part.

The forum

Click on image above. It is, quite simply, a place to ask a question about the Strangford Lough Crossing and receive a public, evidenced answer.

You give your name. You write your question. I read it, publish it, and answer it — in public, with sources cited, in plain English. Every exchange stays on the record for anyone to read, quote, share, or challenge.

There is no comment section, no anonymous trolling, no political agenda dressed as a question. There is a pre-moderation policy, published on the site, that excludes defamation, abuse, off-topic material, and the things you would expect a serious public forum to exclude. Everything else gets a fair hearing.

What is already there

The forum opens with 29 questions and answers I have prepared in advance — covering the ground the debate keeps returning to, drawn from my feasibility study and from the public correspondence I have had with elected representatives, officials, and journalists over the past 18 months.

The questions are organised under six headings:

  • Engineering — what kind of bridge, what kind of foundations, what kind of wind loading, what we don’t yet know about the seabed
  • Cost — the real range, what the £500m DfI figure actually means, how Queensferry inflates to 2026 prices, whole-life ferry cost
  • Traffic — current ferry use, suppressed demand, emergency-service response times, HGV freight constraints, the 75 km detour
  • Environment — the SAC/SPA/Ramsar designations, tidal flows in the Narrows, the climate-positive crossing argument, embedded vs operational carbon
  • Political — DfI’s official position, cross-community and cross-party support, the ferry management transfer, Narrow Water Bridge governance lessons
  • Funding — Shared Island Fund precedent, UKIMA Section 50, tolling structures from Mersey Gateway and the Severn, BCR thresholds, the Executive net position

If a topic you care about is missing, ask. That’s the point.

What I am asking the forum to do

Three things.

First, to demystify. Strangford Lough Crossing has been a 60-year conversation that, in the public mind, lives somewhere between “obviously a good idea” and “obviously impossible”. The truth is more interesting, and the numbers are knowable. The forum is a place to look at them together.

Second, to test my own work. I am not the Department for Infrastructure. I am a Chartered Quantity Surveyor doing this in my own time because nobody else was. If my BCR is wrong, my carbon arithmetic is wrong, my optimism bias factor is wrong — I want to know. Public questioning, with sources, is how that gets corrected. If you have counter evidence, share it.

Third, to raise the standard of the conversation. Right now, the most-cited cost figure for an SLC is described by DfI itself, in writing, as a “very rough cost estimate”. The case against a feasibility study is partly built on numbers nobody is willing to defend in detail. A public forum where every claim has a source is a small contribution to changing that.

What I am not asking the forum to do

I am not asking it to lobby. I am not asking it to take sides between Unionist and Nationalist, urban and rural, Stormont and Westminster. I am not asking it to declare the bridge necessary, optimal, or inevitable.

The campaign’s ask has always been narrow and specific: that the Department for Infrastructure commission an independent feasibility study. That is Stage 1 of the standard HM Treasury / IPA gateway process. It is the point at which the gaps in current evidence — sub-seabed geology, freight origin-destination data, sub-regional ambulance response times, project-specific wind loading — would be addressed properly, by people with the mandate and budget to do so.

A feasibility study is not approval to build a bridge. It is approval to find out properly whether one is viable. That is a materially different ask, and the forum exists to make it easier for the public to engage with it on the merits.

How to take part

  1. Visit the forum by clicking on the image above.
  2. Read what is already there — the homepage has six topic cards and an “Editor’s picks” section
  3. If you have a question, click Ask a question, fill in your name, your email (kept private — used only for moderation and to notify you when answered), pick a category, and submit
  4. You’ll get a confirmation. I aim to publish and answer within three working days
  5. If your question is published with an answer, the email address you gave is informed; you can share the permanent link wherever you like

It is open to everyone — residents of the Ards Peninsula and South Down, councillors, MLAs, civil servants, journalists, academics, contractors, sceptics, supporters, anyone with a stake. Constituents of the two councils that passed unanimous motions calling for a feasibility study are particularly welcome.

This forum exists because the case for a fixed crossing of Strangford Lough has waited long enough. The numbers are knowable, the questions are fair, and the public deserves to see the working.

Ask a question. I’ll answer it.

Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS
QUINTIN QS · Belfast
mail@kevinbarryqs.com

Useful links