The imposing cathedral of St Cecilia of Albi sits in the middle of a modest French town in the Languedoc region, towering over everything around it.
Built as a fortress against heresy and rebelliousness and as a symbol of episcopal power, it is the largest brick cathedral in the world, with an estimated 25 million bricks used to build it.
Constructing such a monumental symbol of authority takes time and immense resources. Albi Cathedral took 200 years to build.
It is estimated that the cost of building it would have run to hundreds of millions if not billions of euro in today’s money.
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One study suggests that between 1100 and 1250 the building of Gothic churches in the Paris Basin alone consumed on average 21.5 per cent of the regional economy.
Luckily Bishop Bernard de Castanet of Albi was able to sell spiritual indulgences to his parishioners which helped to pay for its construction.
The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were built at a time when the Catholic church was the dominant source of power in Europe and long before the nation state had emerged to shape and direct the aspirations of the masses.
Many, if not most, of these remarkable buildings have also become cultural icons and house artistic and architectural treasures intended to inspire – and terrify – the parishioners into religious obedience.
Nowadays it is impossible to imagine such a project. I’m guessing that present generations lack the patience or naivety to bet their faith and taxes on a project that would take generations to complete, and religious threats are unlikely to have much sway these days.
Yet the 20th century saw the completion of magnificent megaprojects, the construction of which was often controversial at the time.
One example is the Sydney Opera House. Originally commissioned in 1959, it took 10 years longer to build than originally envisaged and it went over budget by 1,360 per cent.
The project was plagued by political interference, changes in government and constant budget scrutiny that ultimately led to lead architect Jørn Utzon’s resignation in 1966. He left Australia and never came back to see the project completed.
Yet within two years after opening, the Opera House had been paid for, thanks to a lottery that had been set up to fund it. The Sydney Opera House is now a Unesco world heritage site.
In comparison to other European countries, Ireland has few modern standout buildings. Our national contribution to world architecture and engineering is modest and associated with colonial grandeur rather than public buildings or large infrastructural projects.
There are compelling historical reasons for the impoverished state of Ireland’s public infrastructure until independence in 1922, though perhaps the nation’s railway network is an exception.
One of the first initiatives of the Irish Free State was the construction of the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric scheme in Co Clare, which was completed in 1929.
At a projected cost of £5 million (which was about 20 per cent of the national budget in 1925), it was an enormous sum for a post-Civil War state. Critics argued for smaller, less ambitious projects or said the money would be better spent directly on agriculture.
Today’s megaprojects are more likely to serve functional rather than cultural needs, such as the national children’s hospital or MetroLink, a tunnelled metro system that will connect the city centre with the airport and towns of Fingal. (I am a member of the board of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, which is the sponsoring agency for MetroLink.)
Many large-scale infrastructure projects have been hugely damaging to the environment, for example the Three Gorges Dam in China. But large-scale projects do not necessarily need to be environmentally destructive.
We need to think of supergrids, forests, bog restoration, metro and light railway schemes as megaprojects that are consistent with our climate goals. Nature restoration and climate adaptation, too, are a long-term, expensive endeavours that require government leadership and multigenerational financial commitments. Such megaprojects benefit the public good and the environment, and their economic benefits are spread widely.
For this reason, committing to nature restoration, public transport and a renewable energy system is ultimately the hallmark of a mature democracy in the 21st century. The State (or its proxies) will have to plan for the future, acquire land portfolios and shoulder long-term investments that inevitably carry risk.
Long-term, large-scale projects require a political vision combined with a strong administrative state to secure the funding to see them through to completion.
Megaprojects are complex, expensive, high-risk but ultimately transformational. When MetroLink is ready to take passengers from the early 2030s, there will be no doubt it was worth the long wait.
Sadhbh O’Neill is an environmental and climate researcher. She is writing in a personal capacity
