Family loses home in plans for 90m road

A FAMILY will lose their home outside Killarney to make way for a 90 million road.

Seán and Margaret Cronin, who have two children, Aisling, six, and Orla, two, said they had been expecting the bad news, but were still very disappointed when it came.

“This has been our home for the past seven years and we’ve put our heart and soul into it. It will be an awful blow to lose it,” said Seán, a psychiatric nurse.

Their home, at Tiernaboul, is directly on the route of the proposed 21km road between Farranfore and Killarney and is, according to Kerry County Council, the only house to be demolished along the route.

Margaret Cronin said she was gutted, adding: “This might be just a house to the council, but it’s our home.”

Plans for the road were put on public display in Killarney this week and 150 landowners are to be affected, with many farms and a number of rural communities being divided.

There have been calls for the improvement of the existing Killarney/Farranfore road, rather than building a new road.

But county engineer Tom Curran said safety would be compromised because of too many junctions and private entrances and up to 17 houses would have to demolished. Meanwhile, construction work on the road is not expected to start until 2007.