No funding for M20 road projects, says Varadkar
A delegation led by Cork County Council officials and Mallow-based TDs Tom Barry and Sean Sherlock recently met with Transport Minister Leo Varadkar to plead with him to fund some vital road projects in North Cork.
Mr Varadkar had earlier signalled that no funding would be available in the near future for the proposed €800m M20 Cork-Limerick motorway.
However, the delegation argued that vital parts of that project should still get the go-ahead.
In particular, they wanted a bypass of Charleville, a northern ring road in Mallow, and the realignment of hazardous bends at Ballybeg, south of Buttevant.
Mr Varadkar has decided not to release funds for these three projects.
Fine Gael TD Tom Barry said on hearing the news, he immediately wrote to Mr Varadkar expressing his disappointment and pointing out that about €20m had already been spent on designing the M20.
He said he had high-lighted that building a ring road in Mallow was seen as vital in advance of plans by Dairygold to invest €130m in the town.
Mr Barry said €25m should be set aside for the ring road to relieve traffic congestion in the town centre.
“The lack of investment in Cork will affect jobs and certainly does not instil confidence in the companies that are committing funds as it stands to the area,” he said.
Mr Barry said he the ring road in particular would “be a key infrastructural cog for the extra milk that will be processed in Mallow post 2015”.
Not having the road would be “an error when weighing Ireland’s potential areas of economic growth in Munster”, he said.
Councillors had also hoped that at least some money would be provided for the Ballybeg section of the proposed road as a number of serious traffic accidents have occurred there in recent years.
