A subsidised ferry service. A refused feasibility study. And a question no one in government will answer.
Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS | Campaign Lead | May 2026
There is a simple commercial test that any independent-minded analyst would apply to a publicly funded operation: is the taxpayer getting value for money, and has any genuine alternative ever been properly evaluated? In the case of the Strangford Ferry Service, the honest answer to both questions is: we do not know. And the reason we do not know is that the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) has twice formally refused to commission the study that would tell us.
Ask any operator who has built a business by dismantling subsidised monopolies what they make of this situation. They would not need to read the file. The headline tells the story: a protected, publicly funded service, never exposed to competitive appraisal, absorbing over two million pounds of public money every year, and a government department actively refusing to spend a fraction of that sum to find out whether it represents the best use of public funds. In the private sector, that is called protecting the incumbent. In the public sector, it should be called a governance failure.
“The Department is spending public money at a rate of over two million pounds a year to subsidise a service it has never independently appraised against the alternative.”
Note how cool the traffic intensity is across Strangford Lough. Observe the redness in Newtownards, exactly as Michelle McIlveen MLA described.
Note the colour changes 5 years post bridge; And Newtownards traffic calms down in colour intensity
1. The Numbers That Should Embarrass a Government Department
The verified net annual subsidy to the Strangford Ferry Service is £2,090,000. This figure is not an estimate, a campaign assertion, or a media approximation. It is a confirmed figure disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, reference FOI DFI-2024-0366, covering the financial year 2023/24.
Set against that annual subsidy, the independent feasibility study the campaign has requested would cost between £250,000 and £500,000, depending on scope and whether an Outline Business Case component is included. That is specialist industry advice, documented in the campaign project file.
In plain terms: the Department is refusing to spend between six weeks and two and a half months of its own annual subsidy commitment in order to find out whether that commitment is the best available use of public money. No serious commercial or public sector governance framework would sanction this position. Yet it is the position DfI has formally adopted, twice.
A hard-nosed commercial operator looking at these numbers would say: any business that spends over two million pounds a year on a single operating cost, and refuses to spend half a million to evaluate whether there is a better option, is not being prudent. It is being negligent. The difference is important. Prudence requires evidence. What DfI is practising is the studied avoidance of evidence.
“Between six weeks and two and a half months of the annual subsidy. That is the cost of the study DfI says it cannot justify.”
2. The Circular Logic at the Heart of the Refusal
DfI has refused the feasibility study on two separate occasions: by Ian McClung, Head of Consultancy Services, Transport and Appraisal and Modelling (TRAM), in correspondence TOF-0467-2025 dated 24 October 2025; and by Minister Liz Kimmins MLA in correspondence COR-0002-2026 dated 22 January 2026.
The stated basis for refusal is consistent across both: insufficient economic justification for the investment. This position is, on its own terms, self-defeating. Economic justification for a transport scheme is established through a feasibility study. DfI is declining to commission a feasibility study on grounds that require a feasibility study to test. The Department cannot simultaneously refuse the instrument and cite the absence of its output as the reason for refusal.
This is not a campaign characterisation. It is documented directly in the internal DfI memorandum of Mark McPeak, Divisional Roads Manager, Southern Division, dated 7 August 2024, disclosed under FOI DFI-2024-0412. Mr McPeak’s memorandum advised against commissioning a feasibility study on the grounds that it would require public funding and divert resources from other priority work, and that it would, in his words, give “false hope” to elected representatives and the public.
The same memorandum produced a payback period of 356 years for a permanent crossing. That figure was calculated on the basis of current ferry traffic volumes, without induced demand and without tolling. It was, by Mr McPeak’s own description in the same document, a “guesstimate”. It is the number on which DfI’s refusal has rested.
The commercial parallel is exact. In the 1980s and 1990s, state-owned airline monopolies across Europe told their governments that liberalisation was not viable, that demand did not exist to support competition, and that new entrants would fail. Every one of those assertions was made without independent appraisal. Every one of them was wrong. The demand was there. It was suppressed. When the barrier was removed, it was released. DfI is making the same category of argument about Strangford — and doing so on the basis of a figure its own author called a guesstimate.
“The Department’s own official described its headline figure as a ‘guesstimate’ — yet that figure has anchored two formal refusals.”
3. The Demand That Was Never Counted
The 356-year payback calculation uses current ferry volumes as its baseline. This methodological choice ignores the most fundamental principle of infrastructure economics: that major connectivity improvements do not merely serve existing demand. They release suppressed demand and create new demand that did not exist because the barrier to travel was too high.
The most directly applicable precedent is the Cleddau Bridge in Pembrokeshire, which replaced a ferry crossing on the same tidal estuary type as Strangford Lough. The vessel that served Strangford — MV Portaferry, formerly MV Cleddau King, owned by Dyfed County Council and modified by Harland and Wolff — was the very vessel transferred from the Cleddau crossing when the bridge opened. Traffic across the Cleddau crossing grew approximately twenty-fold over 49 years following the bridge opening. Campaign analysis documents this in full (SLC Cleddau Bridge v Ferry Traffic, campaign project file).
The HITRANS Corran Narrows Fixed Link Feasibility Study, published in 2020 and conducted by Stantec UK and COWI, is the closest directly comparable feasibility study available in the United Kingdom. The Corran crossing carries annual vehicle volumes assessed at 92% comparable to Strangford. That study found no environmental showstopper to a fixed link, generated benefit-cost ratios exceeding 1.0 under the majority of scenarios tested, and concluded that further development of the business case was warranted. The Corran study cost a fraction of what DfI spends subsidising Strangford in a single year.
DfI’s analysis included none of this. It used existing volumes, no induced demand, no tolling, and a single-line cost estimate derived from the Narrow Water Bridge. It was not an appraisal. It was an assumption dressed as a calculation.
Every low-cost airline, every toll road operator, every commercial infrastructure developer understands that you do not measure the market by the size of the queue at the old ferry terminal. You measure it by what happens when you remove the barrier. Ryanair did not open routes because the demand already existed in the booking data of Aer Lingus. It opened routes because it understood that artificially high costs and restricted access had prevented the demand from appearing at all. The same logic applies to a crossing that closes at night, breaks down in bad weather, and has no active travel provision. That is not a measured market. It is a suppressed one.
“Traffic across the Cleddau crossing grew approximately twenty-fold after the bridge opened. That vessel went on to serve Strangford. DfI’s 356-year figure assumed no such growth would ever occur here.”
4. The Subsidy Model That Has Never Been Challenged
Any honest analysis of the Strangford Ferry Service must begin with the question: what does the public actually receive for £2,090,000 per year?
The ferry operates a timetabled service subject to weather disruption, mechanical failure, and a service gap that leaves communities without a crossing link outside operating hours. The alternative road route between Strangford and Portaferry is 46 miles and takes approximately 70 minutes by car. There is no active travel option. There is no resilience provision when the ferry cannot operate.
DfI’s own internal papers, disclosed under FOI DFI-2024-0412, note that the ferry “mainly facilitates the local community, particularly those from the Ards Peninsula.” It “also attracts local tourism.” That is the full characterisation of the public benefit offered in justification of a £2,090,000 annual subsidy. No productivity assessment. No labour market access analysis. No assessment of suppressed economic activity on the Ards Peninsula, which the NI Executive Sub-Regional Economic Plan Technical Annex (October 2024) identifies as having the lowest median wages in Northern Ireland.
A commercial operator tendering for this contract on the open market would be required to demonstrate value for money, service levels, resilience, and a credible response to customer demand outside peak hours. None of those tests currently apply to the Strangford Ferry. It operates as a protected monopoly, its subsidy guaranteed, its performance benchmarked against nothing, and its continuation justified by the circular argument that no alternative has been proved viable — because no one has been permitted to test whether it is.
An independent appraisal would test all of this. DfI has declined to conduct one.
“The Ards Peninsula has the lowest median wages in Northern Ireland. DfI’s appraisal of the ferry’s public benefit does not mention wages, productivity, or labour market access.”
5. The Tolling Question DfI Has Not Asked
A fixed crossing with a toll structure is not a hypothetical. It is a proven operational model across the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Mersey Gateway Bridge between Runcorn and Widnes, opened in 2017, operates with an automated toll recovery system using Automatic Number Plate Recognition. The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge in County Wexford — at 887 metres and with a navigational clearance of 36 metres — demonstrates what modern estuarial bridge construction delivers in an Irish context, at an inflation-adjusted cost of approximately £119,500 per metre (October 2025 prices, campaign project file).
The HITRANS Corran Narrows Fixed Link Feasibility Study modelled tolling scenarios directly. At half the current ferry fare rate with a 90% traffic uplift following opening, indicative annual toll revenues of approximately £1.43 million were generated from the Corran crossing. The study noted that automated toll collection could be implemented without staffed booths.
For Strangford, DfI has not modelled tolling at all. The 356-year payback figure in the McPeak memorandum (FOI DFI-2024-0412) makes no provision for any toll recovery. It assumes the full capital cost falls on the public purse with no revenue offset. This is not a neutral assumption. It is a structural choice that guarantees a poor result before the appraisal begins.
Any operator who has structured a toll road or a bridge concession knows that the question is not whether a crossing is viable. The question is whether the revenue model is structured correctly. A crossing with a toll set below the equivalent ferry fare, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with automated recovery and no staffed booths, generating induced demand as the Cleddau, Skye and Mersey Gateway crossings all did, looks nothing like DfI’s 356-year calculation. That calculation did not model a toll crossing. It modelled a bridge with no income. Then it declared the project unviable. That is not analysis. It is a pre-determined conclusion in numerical clothing.
“DfI’s headline payback figure assumes zero toll revenue and zero induced demand. Change either assumption and the number changes fundamentally. That is precisely what a feasibility study would do.”
6. What the Minister Said — and What She Wrote
On 3 February 2026, Minister Liz Kimmins MLA addressed the Strangford Lough Crossing in the Northern Ireland Assembly (Hansard, Volume 188, Number 2). Her recorded words were: “If there is good support and a strong economic case for it, why not? I am happy to keep that under review.”
Twelve days earlier, on 22 January 2026, her Department had written to Councillor Joe Boyle in correspondence COR-0002-2026 formally refusing the feasibility study.
The campaign does not characterise the Minister’s intentions. It notes the factual position: a written refusal dated 22 January 2026 and a Ministerial statement of openness dated 3 February 2026. The question the campaign is pursuing through every available channel is straightforward: which position reflects Departmental policy, and what would it take to convert the latter into a formal direction?
Any private sector board that received a written position from its executive team, and then heard the chief executive make a public statement twelve days later that directly contradicted it, would require an immediate clarification. It would not regard the contradiction as an acceptable state of affairs. It would resolve it. That is what the campaign is asking the Minister to do.
Two councils have now passed formal resolutions in support of an independent feasibility study: Ards and North Down Borough Council, in late March 2026; and Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, in April 2026. Both resolutions are confirmed. The campaign holds the documentary record.
“A formal written refusal on 22 January. A Ministerial statement of openness on 3 February. Both are on the record. The campaign asks only that the latter be acted upon.”
7. The Ask Has Not Changed
The Strangford Lough Crossing Campaign is not asking for a bridge. It is not asking for a commitment to build anything. It is asking for an independent feasibility study, conducted in accordance with the standard transport appraisal framework that DfI applies to every other scheme it evaluates, costing between £250,000 and £500,000, to determine what the evidence actually shows.
That study would test DfI’s assumptions. It would test the 356-year payback figure. It would introduce induced demand, tolling scenarios, whole-life cost comparisons, and a proper Transport Economic Efficiency analysis. It would either confirm that the ferry is the right long-term solution, or it would demonstrate that an alternative warrants further development. Either outcome serves the public interest.
Morrow Gilchrist Associates, an independent economic and public policy advisory firm based at the NI Science Park in Belfast, has confirmed willingness to assist with the feasibility study work, contingent on scope definition and an evidence-based approach. DfI’s stated objection — that no economic justification exists — has been directly countered by an independent firm prepared to do the work.
No credible commercial operator, no serious infrastructure investor, and no responsible public financial controller would accept the proposition that a £2,090,000 annual subsidy commitment should continue indefinitely without independent appraisal, on the grounds that a study estimated to cost between £250,000 and £500,000 cannot be justified. The UK has 665 Private Finance Initiative schemes with an asset value of over £50 billion in operation, as documented in “Infrastructure update: The influence of private finance on delivery mechanisms” (Building magazine, Steve James and Simon Rawlinson of Arcadis, 15 May 2026). Every one of those schemes was preceded by an appraisal. Every one. The Strangford Ferry has never had one.
A government department that spends £2,090,000 per year subsidising a service, refuses to spend up to £500,000 to evaluate whether it represents best value, and characterises an independent appraisal as likely to give “false hope”, is not conducting itself in accordance with any recognised standard of public financial governance. In any other context — a regulated utility, a private concession, a public company — the people making this decision would be answerable to someone for it. Here, they appear to be answerable to no one.
The campaign will continue to make that case until Minister Kimmins, or her successors, issues a formal direction to conduct the study.
“Either the ferry is the right answer and the study will say so. Or it is not. A government that refuses to find out is not protecting public money. It is protecting the status quo.”
Source References
FOI DFI-2024-0366 — Net annual ferry subsidy £2,090,000; operating cost data 2016/17 to 2023/24.
FOI DFI-2024-0412 — Mark McPeak, Divisional Roads Manager, Southern Division, internal memorandum 7 August 2024; 356-year payback figure; “guesstimate” and “false hope” language; cleared by David Porter, Head of Division, 30 August 2024.
TOF-0467-2025 — Ian McClung, Head of Consultancy Services, TRAM, DfI, formal refusal of feasibility study, 24 October 2025.
COR-0002-2026 — Ministerial correspondence, formal refusal, 22 January 2026.
Hansard, Volume 188, Number 2, Northern Ireland Assembly, 3 February 2026 — Minister Kimmins statement.
HITRANS Corran Narrows Fixed Link Feasibility Study — Stantec UK / COWI, published 2020.
NI Executive Sub-Regional Economic Plan Technical Annex, October 2024 — Ards and North Down lowest median wages in Northern Ireland.
Specialist industry advice on feasibility study cost estimate — £250,000 to £500,000, campaign project file.
Ards and North Down Borough Council full council resolution — confirmed late March 2026. Newry, Mourne and Down District Council resolution — confirmed April 2026.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge — inflation-adjusted cost approximately £119,500 per metre, October 2025 prices, campaign project file.
“Infrastructure update: The influence of private finance on delivery mechanisms” — Steve James and Simon Rawlinson, Arcadis, Building magazine, 15 May 2026. 665 PFI schemes, asset value over £50 billion.
Strangford Lough Crossing Campaign | strangfordloughcrossing.org | mail@kevinbarryqs.com | Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS
