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Proposals for fixed sea links to improve transportation between areas of the British Isles include undersea tunnel, bridge, causeway, or combination of these elements.
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North Channel (Kintyre) route
This is the shortest route at around 19 km (12 mi), from the Mull of Kintyre to County Antrim.
North Channel (Galloway) route
This route has been proposed both as either a tunnel or a bridge, However, because of the Beaufort's Dyke sea trench, this route would be deeper than the southern routes. It is believed that such a project was considered by railway engineer Luke Livingston Macassey in the 1890s as "a rail link using either a tunnel, a submerged "tubular bridge" or a solid causeway".
Irish Mail route
This route (from Dublin to Holyhead in Anglesey, Wales) would be about 100 km (62 mi) long and would provide a more direct connection between Ireland and Great Britain.
Tuskar route
The Institute of Engineers of Ireland's 2004 Vision of Transport in Ireland in 2050 imagines a tunnel to be built between the ports of Fishguard and Rosslare along with a new container port on the Shannon Estuary, linking a freight line to Europe. This report also includes ideas for a Belfast-Dublin-Cork high-speed train, and for a new freight line from Rosslare to Shannon. This route would be approximately twice the distance of the English Channel Tunnel at over 100 km (roughly 60 miles long).
Channel Tunnel
Second Channel Tunnel
Channel Islands Tunnel
Development history of Great Britain/Ireland proposed connections
A 1799 description of a failed proposal for a bridge from Howth to Holyhead is a mocking metaphor for the failure of the Union Bill 1799, which succeeded next year as the Act of Union 1800.
Between 1886 and 1900, proposals for a link to Scotland were "seriously explored by engineers, industrialists, and Unionist politicians". In 1885, Irish Builder and Engineer said a tunnel under the Irish Sea had been discussed "for some time back". In 1890, engineer Luke Livingston Macassey outlined a Stranraer–Belfast link by tunnel, submerged "tubular bridge", or solid causeway. In 1897 a British firm applied for £15,000 towards the cost of carrying out borings and soundings in the North Channel to see if a tunnel between Ireland and Scotland was viable. The link would have been of immense commercial benefit, was significant strategically and would have meant faster transatlantic travel from Britain, via Galway and other Irish ports. When Hugh Arnold-Foster asked in the Commons in 1897 about a North Channel tunnel, Arthur Balfour said "the financial aspects ... are not of a very promising character".
In 1915, a tunnel was proposed by Gershom Stewart as a defence against a German U-boat blockade of Ireland but dismissed by H. H. Asquith as "hardly practicable in the present circumstances". In 1918, Stewart proposed that German prisoners of war might dig the tunnel; Bonar Law said the Select Committee on Transport could consider the matter.
The Senate of Northern Ireland debated a North Channel Tunnel on 25 May 1954. In 1956 Harford Hyde, Unionist Westminster MP for North Belfast, raised a motion in the UK House of Commons for a tunnel across the North Channel. In 1980, John Biggs-Davison suggested European Economic Community involvement in a North Channel tunnel; Philip Goodhart said no tunnel was planned. In 1988, John P. Wilson, the Irish Minister for Tourism and Transport said his department estimated an Irish Sea tunnel would cost twice as much as the English Channel Tunnel and generate one fifth of the revenue, thus being economically unviable. In 1997–8, the Department of Public Enterprise refused to fund a feasibility study requested by Symonds engineering to build an immersed tube tunnel. Symonds revived the plan in 2000, with an £8m feasibility study and a £14b construction cost estimate. In 2005, the Minister for Transport said he had not studied A Vision of Transport in Ireland in 2050, published in September 2004 by the Irish Academy of Engineering, a report which included a Wexford–Pembroke tunnel.
The proposal of building a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland is supported by the Democratic Unionist Party. DUP MP Sammy Wilson compared the idea to the approved Channel Tunnel and HS2 projects. The party made a feasibility study into a tunnel or enclosed bridge a precondition to coalition support in the event of a hung parliament in the 2015 election.