A new article by economist Colm McCarthy against the planned 19km MetroLink from central Dublin to Swords has prompted a call for newspapers to fact-check their columnists.Councillor Feljin Jose, the Green Partys spokesperson on transport, made the call after McCarthy wrongly claimed in the Sunday Business Post today that The only available evaluation of MetroLinks costs and benefits was released as part of the TIIs preliminary assessment in 2022.Cllr Jose said: Newspapers should be required to fact-check their columnists. Anti-train columnist Colm McCarthy claims that the only publicly available cost-benefit analysis of MetroLink is from a preliminary assessment in 2022. An updated cost-benefit analysis was published last week.The MetroLink Detailed Business Case Submission to the National Transport Authority dated September 2026 was published online and has been the subject of much reporting in the last week. The cost-estimated figures from that were used in McCarthys latest article, which wrongly claims the last assessment was published years ago.McCarthy has previously argued against Luas and Dart. In the Business Post today, he wrote that the current cost estmate is around 16 billion when compared to an initial estimate of just 2 billion when the project was revived over twenty years ago and to 3 billion as recently as 2018, Today he also wrote that Cities cited as examples for Dublin include London, Paris and several others with far higher populations, greater traffic densities and fixed-line public transport inherited from the nineteenth century. But as IrishCycle.com covered late last year, 57 metro rail systems across Europe serve cities of varying sizes, many similar in size to Dublin.He has in this article and previous ones also claimed that Dublin has a low population density, but metro systems have been built in cities with a similar population density.McCarthy spends a large part of his most recent article focused on Dublin Airport when it is just one of 16 stations on the planned line. The proposed line is roughly parallel to the Dublin Port Tunnel, built and paid for, host to frequent bus services to both Dublin Airport and Swords. Critics of MetroLink fear that airport traffic will be pointlessly diverted to a rail line costing 16 billion which offers no improvement on current 25 minute bus journey times, direct to the terminals. Where precisely are the benefits? said McCarthy, as if the route was only being built for the airport, and the bus routes which go via the Port Tunnel are not also subject to congestion at both ends.Away from very limited trips between the quays and Dublin Airport, even express buses to the airport are much slower than MetroLink will be. For example, from St Stephens Green to the airport, Dublin Express is timetabled at 50 minutes; MetroLink is expected to take around 25-30 minutes for the same trip, and around 20 minutes from OConnell Street to the airport. Unlike the Port Tunnel routes, MetroLink will have a number of stops and connections in Dublin City inside the M50, where 10 of the 16 stations will be located. MetroLink will also connect to the planned Dart+ West and South West lines at a new interchange station in Glasneven.