- BY Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS
- POSTED IN Latest News
- WITH 0 COMMENTS
- PERMALINK
- STANDARD POST TYPE
WHY NOT? THE MINISTER ASKED THE RIGHT QUESTION. NOW WE NEED THE ANSWER IN WRITING.
On 3 February 2026, Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins MLA stood in the Northern Ireland Assembly and, in the course of an Adjournment Debate on the A20 Portaferry Road, said the following about a permanent crossing over Strangford Lough: “If there is good support and a strong economic case for it, why not? I am happy to keep that under review.”
That is on the Hansard record. Volume 188, No. 2. You can look it up.
Twelve days earlier, her Department had written to Councillor Joe Boyle SDLP in Portaferry with the Department’s standard position: no immediate need for a fixed crossing had been identified.
Twelve days. Same Minister. Two very different statements.
The campaign is not here to catch anyone out. Politicians update their thinking; that is what we want them to do. What we are noting, plainly, is that a Ministerial openness expressed in the Assembly does not, by itself, change anything. Not unless it is converted into a formal direction to officials. And that has not happened yet.
The numbers that explain why it should
Ards and North Down has the lowest median wages of any of Northern Ireland’s eleven council areas. £450.10 per week as of 2023, against a Northern Ireland average of £528.90. Belfast’s median wage is 44% higher. The area also has the second lowest labour productivity in Northern Ireland, at £47,957 output per filled job in 2022.
These figures are not from this campaign. They are from the NI Executive’s own Sub-Regional Economic Plan Technical Annex, published in October 2024, sourcing ONS data. The same document explains why: a large proportion of the working population commutes to Belfast, because the peninsula cannot retain higher-value employment locally. The wage gap between residents of Ards and North Down and those who actually work there was approximately £49.90 per week in 2023. Highly educated people living in the area, working elsewhere, commuting out, spending their productive hours on roads rather than in their communities.
A fixed crossing over Strangford Lough does not solve all of that on its own. But it addresses the structural barrier directly. It widens the labour market on both sides of the Lough, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no timetable and no cancellations.
Speaking of cancellations: the Ards and North Down Borough Council Annual Report 2024/25 records that 848 ferry sailings were cancelled in 2023/24. Fog. Mechanical failure. Staff unavailability. Industrial action. 848 times in a year that the crossing was not available. For anyone planning a business, a shift, a medical appointment, or a school run around that service, 848 cancellations is not an inconvenience. It is a structural constraint.
The annual net cost of running that service to the public purse is £2,090,000. Operating costs of £3,520,000 against income of £1,430,000. That is what Freedom of Information disclosure DFI-2024-0366 shows. Every year. No capital asset created. Just a recurring liability.
A feasibility study — the thing we are actually asking for — is estimated at £250,000 to £500,000, based on specialist procurement advice. That is between six weeks and two and a half months of net ferry subsidy. To establish, for the first time ever, whether a better option exists.
The Department’s own cost estimate is unreliable
The Department for Infrastructure has an internal cost estimate of £650 million for the crossing. That figure has been used repeatedly to suggest the project is unaffordable, without it ever having been independently tested.
The author of that estimate, DfI Divisional Roads Manager Mark McPeak, described it in his own internal August 2024 memorandum — disclosed under Freedom of Information reference DFI-2024-0412 — as a “guesstimate.” His word, not ours.
Professional comparable analysis, drawing on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge in County Wexford and the HITRANS Corran Narrows Fixed Link Feasibility Study (Stantec UK/COWI, 2020), points to a realistic range of £280 million to £350 million. Interestingly, when Minister Kimmins referenced the crossing’s cost in the Assembly on 3 February 2026, she cited a figure of “in and around £300 million and potentially more.” That is the Minister’s own instinct, expressed publicly, and it is materially closer to the professional comparable range than to her Department’s internal guesstimate.
An independent feasibility study would resolve this. That is precisely what it is for.
The classification problem nobody is talking about
The Department has consistently said that the crossing is a matter for the Eastern Transport Plan 2035, not for the Regional Transport Plan 2035. This sounds technical. It matters.
The Eastern Transport Plan covers five council areas including Ards and North Down. Newry, Mourne and Down — the other side of the crossing — is not within the Eastern Transport Plan area. A crossing between two separate council districts, over a major inter-tidal water body, does not belong fully to any single local transport plan. No local plan can address an infrastructure gap that sits on the boundary between two separate plan areas.
DfI has used an administrative classification to prevent the crossing from being assessed as what it actually is: a cross-boundary strategic connection between two Local Government Districts. Both councils whose areas the crossing would link — Ards and North Down Borough Council and Newry, Mourne and Down District Council — have passed formal resolutions calling for a feasibility study. They have done their part. The planning framework has not caught up.
What actually needs to happen
There are three things, any one of which would move this forward.
The first is a written Ministerial direction from Minister Kimmins to her officials, directing the commissioning of an independent feasibility study. This requires only a decision. No budget commitment to a bridge. No construction contract. A decision to gather evidence, using the Department’s own standard appraisal framework.
The second is formal inclusion of the crossing in the Eastern Transport Plan 2035, currently under development, as a scheme requiring further assessment. That is the minimum consistent with the Ministerial statement of 3 February 2026. Both councils have called for exactly this.
The third is a Written Assembly Question referencing the Minister’s statement of 3 February 2026 directly, asking her to confirm whether it represents a change of direction to her Department. The formal answer will be on the Assembly record and cannot be quietly absorbed back into the standing institutional position.
None of these requires a budget. None of these commits anyone to building a bridge. All three are entirely within existing constitutional arrangements.
The Narrow Water Bridge and the window that is closing
The Narrow Water Bridge — a cross-border bridge over Carlingford Lough, funded through the Irish Government’s Shared Island Fund — is anticipated to open in 2027-2028. The Irish Government has confirmed, in formal correspondence reference DOT-TM25-11858-2025, its openness to Shared Island Initiative co-funding for the Strangford Lough Crossing, subject to Northern Ireland Executive leadership.
When the Narrow Water Bridge opens, it will provide live, comparable evidence of demand release from a cross-border water crossing of similar character to the Strangford crossing. A feasibility study commissioned before or alongside that opening will have access to the best available comparator data. That window is now. It will not remain open indefinitely.
The question answers itself
The Minister asked: if there is a strong economic case and good support, “why not?”
The support is there. Two councils. Cross-party. Cross-community. 94% in the campaign survey. MLAs from DUP, Alliance, Sinn Fein and SDLP have all engaged.
The economic case is in the Government’s own data. Second lowest productivity. Lowest wages. Highest entrepreneurship rate. A workforce whose educational attainment ranks third in Northern Ireland and whose productivity ranks tenth. That is not a failing community. That is a community failing to connect to its own potential.
The feasibility study is the answer to the Minister’s question. It is how you find out whether the economic case is strong enough to justify proceeding. You cannot answer the question without it. The Department cannot cite the absence of evidence as grounds for refusing to gather the evidence.
At £250,000 to £500,000, based on specialist procurement advice, it costs between six weeks and two and a half months of what the ferry subsidy already costs every year — with nothing to show for it but another year of missed opportunity.
Why not? Minister, we are still waiting for that answer in writing.
Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS, Campaign Lead, Strangford Lough Crossing Campaign strangfordloughcrossing.org | mail@kevinbarryqs.com
Sources: NI Executive Sub-Regional Economic Plan Technical Annex (October 2024); Hansard Vol. 188 No. 2, 3 February 2026; FOI references DFI-2024-0366 and DFI-2024-0412; Ards and North Down Borough Council Annual Report 2024/25; HITRANS Corran Narrows Fixed Link Feasibility Study (Stantec UK/COWI, 2020); Irish Government correspondence DOT-TM25-11858-2025; DfI correspondence TOF-0467-2025. Feasibility study cost: campaign estimate, Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS, April 2026, based on specialist procurement advice.
NEW CAMPAIGN DOCUMENTS: THE PRODUCTIVITY CASE AND THE PATH TO ACTION
April 2026 | Strangford Lough Crossing Campaign | strangfordloughcrossing.org
The campaign has this month published two new documents setting out, in plain terms, why a permanent crossing over Strangford Lough matters economically and what specifically needs to happen next.
The first, Productivity Indicators: Baseline Position and Expected Movement, draws on the NI Executive’s own Sub-Regional Economic Plan (October 2024) to show that Ards and North Down has the lowest median wages and the second lowest labour productivity of any council area in Northern Ireland — despite having the third highest educational attainment and the highest rate of early-stage entrepreneurship. The document sets out, indicator by indicator, how a fixed crossing would move those numbers and why the mechanism is credible. It is addressed to Ministers, MLAs and MPs but is readable by anyone who has ever wondered whether there is a hard economic case behind this campaign. There is.
The second, From Openness to Obligation: The Strategic Trigger Analysis, addresses the harder question. On 3 February 2026, Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins MLA said in the Assembly that if there is a strong economic case for a crossing, “why not? I am happy to keep that under review” (Hansard, Volume 188, No. 2). Twelve days earlier, her Department had written to a local councillor saying no need for a crossing had been identified. This document sets out the four formal mechanisms by which Ministerial goodwill becomes a binding departmental obligation — and why, without one of those four steps being taken, the institutional position does not change regardless of what is said in the Assembly chamber.
Both documents are grounded exclusively in named, dated, retrievable primary sources. No assertion is made in either that cannot be traced to an official record.
They are available in full below. The blog post summarising both is published above.
Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS, Campaign Lead strangfordloughcrossing.org | mail@kevinbarryqs.com