- BY Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS
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“Why Not?” — The Two Words That Could Change Everything
Strangford Lough Crossing Campaign Blog | 9 May 2026
Three months ago, in the Northern Ireland Assembly, Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins MLA was asked about the prospect of a fixed crossing between Portaferry and Strangford. Her response, recorded verbatim in the Official Report of the Assembly (Hansard, Volume 188, No. 2, 3 February 2026), was two words that stopped this campaign in its tracks — in the best possible way.
“Why not? I am happy to keep that under review.”
Two words. On the Hansard record. And this weekend, the campaign is reflecting on what they mean, what they require, and how close we believe we now are to something genuinely historic for two communities that have waited, frankly, long enough.
Where we have come from
It is worth pausing for a moment on the journey. Since the 1950’s well known individuals have put forward the case for a permanent crossing of Strangford Lough, and each of those individuals were correct.
On that strong, researched and instinctive basis, we assisted, to once and for all, professionally put the evidence in the public court of opinion. Since 2024, this campaign has made the case — methodically, evidentially, and entirely through verifiable public sources — that the Strangford Ferry service is not meeting demand but suppressing it. That approximately 29,000 vehicles travel the roads around Strangford Lough every day while only approximately 650 use the ferry (DfI traffic count data, 2018 to 2023) is not a sign of low demand. It is a sign that 83 per cent of potential users have already voted with their steering wheel and are taking the long way round.
The annual net cost to the public purse of running that ferry is £2,090,000. That figure comes not from the campaign but from DfI itself, disclosed under Freedom of Information reference DFI-2024-0366. Operating costs of approximately £3.52 million, income of approximately £1.43 million, net subsidy: £2,090,000. Every year. Without the creation of a single capital asset in return.
Over thirty years at current figures, that is more than £62 million of public expenditure to maintain a service operating at 34 per cent of its maximum capacity.
We have also documented, through Freedom of Information reference DFI-2024-0412, that DfI’s internal cost estimate for a fixed crossing — the figure of £650 million that has been used to justify inaction — was characterised by its own author, Mark McPeak, Divisional Roads Manager, Southern Division, as a “guesstimate.” Not an engineering assessment. Not a quantity surveying exercise. A guesstimate. Comparable projects, including the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge at New Ross (887 metres, 36 metres navigational clearance, built by BAM Ireland, cost approximately £119,500 per metre in October 2025 prices), suggest that the realistic figure for a crossing of the Strangford Narrows is a very great deal lower than £650 million.
The campaign has not claimed to know the precise cost of the crossing. That is precisely the point. The purpose of a feasibility study is to establish costs objectively, by professionals, using Transport Appraisal Guidance — DfI’s own standard framework, applied to every other transport proposal the Department considers. The campaign has been asking for that study, and nothing more, since 2024.
What the Department said — and what the Minister said
DfI’s formal position is recorded in TOF-0467-2025, signed by Ian McClung, Head of Consultancy Services, on 24 October 2025. The Department’s position is that the crossing is not a priority, that the ferry meets current and projected demand, and that a feasibility study would not represent a good use of public funding. The circular logic in that position — refusing to commission the instrument that would test whether the position is correct — has been the campaign’s central argument throughout.
Then came 3 February 2026.
During an Adjournment Debate on the A20 Portaferry Road, Minister Kimmins responded to a question about the crossing with the words quoted above. The campaign records those words accurately and without embellishment. It does not claim they constitute a formal commitment. But they are on the Hansard record, in Volume 188, No. 2, and they represent a meaningful shift in Ministerial tone from the Department’s written institutional position.
The challenge — and the opportunity — is to ensure that those words are not quietly re-absorbed into the Department’s standing position before they can be converted into action.
What “keeping it under review” actually means in practice
There is a very straightforward way for the Minister to give effect to her Assembly statement. It does not require a large budget commitment. It does not require a position on bridge design, aesthetics, or construction contracts. It does not require the Minister to commit to a crossing at all.
It requires a direction to DfI to commission a TAG-compliant independent feasibility study.
The campaign’s current cost estimate for that study is £250,000 to £500,000, based on specialist procurement advice (Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS, campaign project file). At the annual net ferry subsidy of £2,090,000, that is between six weeks and twelve weeks of what the public purse is already spending — on a service with no end date, no capital return, and a 34 per cent capacity utilisation rate.
The HITRANS Corran Narrows Fixed Link Feasibility Study, published in 2020 by Stantec UK and COWI for Highlands and Islands Transport Partnership, provides the directly comparable Scottish precedent. That study modelled 72 economic scenarios for a fixed crossing replacing a ferry service, and generated benefit-cost ratios exceeding 1.0 in the majority of those scenarios. It is exactly the type of rigorous, independent analysis that the campaign is seeking for the Strangford Narrows — and it exists because a transport authority chose to commission it.
If the study finds that a Strangford crossing does not represent value for money, that finding goes on the public record and the campaign will respect it. What cannot be justified — and what the campaign will continue to say clearly — is refusing to conduct the assessment at all while continuing to spend £2,090,000 of public money every year on the alternative.
The door from Dublin is open — but only Northern Ireland can open it from this side
One dimension of this story that deserves wider attention is the Irish Government’s position. Formal correspondence with the Department of the Taoiseach (reference DOT-TM25-11858-2025, Christina Downey, 16 September 2025) established clearly that Irish Government cooperation on cross-border infrastructure is conditional on Northern Ireland Executive leadership. The letter does not close the door. It confirms the door is open. But it must be opened from this side first.
The precedent for what that cooperation could look like is already under construction twelve miles down the coast. The Narrow Water Bridge, funded through the Shared Island Fund at €102 million with BAM Ireland as contractor, is due for completion in 2027 to 2028. The Shared Island Fund now stands at €2 billion committed through to 2035 (Annex I, NDP Sectoral Plan: Shared Island, July 2025). DfI is already represented on the Narrow Water Bridge Oversight Board. The institutional mechanisms for cross-border infrastructure co-investment are in place and operating. They simply have not yet been applied to the Strangford Narrows — because the Northern Ireland Executive has not yet taken the first step.
That first step is a feasibility study. Nothing more.
Cross-community, cross-party, cross-border: the political context
This campaign is, and has always been, cross-community in character. That is not a rhetorical position. It is a factual one. Both Ards and North Down Borough Council and Newry, Mourne and Down District Council have passed formal resolutions supporting an independent feasibility study. Support for the campaign has been recorded from Sinn Fein, DUP, SDLP, and Alliance. Jim Shannon MP, the long-serving Member of Parliament for the Strangford constituency, expressed support for the scheme and confirmed that he would welcome funding from any external source, including potential Irish Government investment, if it benefited his constituents (campaign correspondence to An Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD, 23 July 2025). Chris Hazzard MP was briefed by the campaign on 13 March 2026 and asked to engage directly with the Minister on the specific question of a formal direction to DfI. Michelle McIlveen MLA has maintained consistent Assembly engagement through written questions throughout.
When the DUP member for Strangford and the Sinn Fein member for South Down are both in support of the same infrastructure question, it is worth pausing on that for a moment. This is not a project that belongs to one tradition or one party. It belongs to the communities on both sides of the Narrows — and to the travelling public across the entire peninsula that currently drives the long way round.
A word about the wider infrastructure picture
The CPD — Continued Prolonged Delays — British Isles Infrastructure Tracker (QuintinQS, updated 6 May 2026, available at https://ktbcpdbritishisles.netlify.app/) places the Strangford Lough Crossing question in a sobering wider context. Across 280 tracked infrastructure schemes in seven jurisdictions, the average delay is 307 weeks per scheme. The single longest delay in the entire dataset is Northern Ireland’s own A5 Western Transport Corridor, at 885 weeks from announcement with not a metre built since 2007.
The lesson of that data is not that infrastructure is impossible. It is that the failure to conduct proper, rigorous, evidence-based appraisal at the outset — the very process this campaign has been requesting — is consistently the root cause of the delays and cost overruns that follow. The campaign is asking for the appraisal process to begin. That is the opposite of the behaviour that the CPD data identifies as the primary accountability failure in public infrastructure.
So. Where are we this weekend?
We are, the campaign believes, genuinely close to a moment of decision.
Minister Kimmins has spoken. The Assembly record reflects that. Two councils have resolved. The Irish Government has confirmed its door is open. The comparator project — the Narrow Water Bridge — is on site and on schedule. The Cleddau Bridge precedent, where traffic grew approximately twenty-fold in the 49 years after the ferry was replaced in 1975, tells us what infrastructure transformation actually does to suppressed demand when the constraint is removed. The Strangford Ferry, over the same 49-year period, has recorded zero comparable growth.
The campaign is not asking the Minister to build a bridge. It is asking her to spend the equivalent of between six and twelve weeks of the current ferry subsidy on finding out whether she should.
The evidence for that study is on the table. The political support for it is cross-community and cross-party. The Irish Government is ready to engage when the Executive leads. The feasibility study cost, at £250,000 to £500,000, is the most cost-effective piece of due diligence available to any Minister seeking to demonstrate that she takes both public expenditure and evidence-based decision-making seriously.
“Why not?” the Minister asked in February.
The campaign’s answer, respectfully but firmly, is: there is no good reason why not. There never has been. And the time to act on that is now.
Kevin Barry BSc(Hons) MRICS Campaign Lead, Strangford Lough Crossing Campaign strangfordloughcrossing.org | mail@kevinbarryqs.com 9 May 2026
All figures and statements in this post are drawn from primary sources including Freedom of Information disclosures (DFI-2024-0366, DFI-2024-0412), the Northern Ireland Assembly Official Report (Hansard, Volume 188, No. 2, 3 February 2026), formal DfI correspondence (TOF-0467-2025), Irish Government correspondence (DOT-TM25-11858-2025), the HITRANS Corran Narrows Fixed Link Feasibility Study (Stantec UK/COWI, 2020), the NDP Sectoral Plan: Shared Island (Annex I, July 2025), and DfI traffic count data 2018 to 2023. Full references are available at strangfordloughcrossing.org.