Talks bid to revive motorway
The county council had spent nearly €20m designing the 80km motorway before the National Roads Authority recently decided it did not have the money to proceed.
A special meeting of the council’s Northern Committee will take place shortly in Mallow to discuss the situation. It is envisaged a delegation of councillors, led by Mr O’Keeffe, will meet NRA officials and Transport Minister Leo Varadkar next month. Councillors will be pressing to reverse the decision, but may have to compromise by agreeing, to at best, the motorway being built on a piecemeal basis.
The motorway was designed to run from Blarney Business Park to Croom, Co Limerick, and was to be built through a Public Private Partnership (PPP).
The NRA also ordered the council to cancel a Bord Pleanála oral hearing which was to be held last week on the proposed junction connection to the motorway from Buttevant.
If the hearing had gone ahead and its board had decided, as expected, to approve the motorway, the council could have issued Compulsory Purchase Orders for the land required.
Mr O’Keeffe said the council had spent €19.5m to date on a project “which was now on the shelf”. Even if the minister and the NRA do an about-turn the council, he said, would “unfortunately start over again”.
The need for a major upgrading of the N20 has been stated time and time again as several sections of it are accident blackspots.
