Controversial road plans still in place

PLANS to run the last section of the M50 motorway through Carrickmines Castle remain in place despite an interim decision to extend and open the incomplete route without building on the archeologically important site.

Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has amended its original contract with road-builders, Ascon, so they can omit Carrickmines from the plans and continue working on the two ends of the motorway which were supposed to join up there.

The northern end will continue to a major new interchange at Sandyford where traffic will be routed on to the Leopardstown Road and a new link road while traffic will be taken from the southern end into the existing road network via an interchange at Laughanstown. The work is to be completed by the end of August 2005.

Dun Laoghaire Rathdown director of transportation Eamon O'Hare said, however, the amendment was not a long-term solution and stressed the original plan was not being dropped.

"It's nonsense to think that we can complete the motorway without Carrickmines. Carrickmines will happen it's just a matter of when," he said.

The row over Carrickmines is now being thrashed out in several different arenas. Conservationists won an injunction last February which suspended work on the site until a full hearing of the issues takes place at a date as yet undecided.

Dun Laoghaire Rathdown believe a consent order from the Minister for the Environment would force the courts to lift the injunction but the council has had no response yet from Martin Cullen.

The Department of the Environment said yesterday a decision was due "shortly" but could not say whether this would be before or after the summer recess.

A grant of consent is unlikely to come before the break, however, as it would then have to remain open to the Oireachtas to debate for 21 days.

Mr O'Hare said the delays, and the amendment of the Ascon contract, were adding tens of millions of euro to the cost of the motorway scheme and causing traffic congestion misery.

But the costs could go even higher if a European Commission investigation under way since late last year finds the council breached EU law by producing an environmental impact statement for the motorway which inadequately addressed the archeological significance of the Carrickmines site.

By law the Commission, which recently appointed a senior independent archeologist to examine the site, could demand the return of tens of millions of euro in cohesion fund grants made available to the project.

Legal officer Liam Cashman said the conclusions of the Commission's investigations would be announced in a few months.

MEP Proinsias de Rossa said he was pleased the immediate threat to the site had abated but he warned the move would not take the onus off the council to explain itself to the Commission.

Mr de Rossa rejected the assertion it would still be necessary to build on Carrickmines to properly complete the motorway and he called on Transport Minister Seamus Brennan to convene a conference of all involved to devise an alternative.