Councillors demand answers on motorway fiasco

FURIOUS south Co Dublin councillors have demanded explanations from local authority management for the South Eastern Motorway fiasco, which is set to cost taxpayers millions of euro.

The elected members will meet senior officials in private this Friday to try to establish where responsibility for the shambles lies and work out a damage limitation strategy.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ordered a stop to the removal of structures from the archeologically important Carrickmines Castle site, which lies in the path of a partially completed motorway.

The order, which stands until after a full High Court hearing into the licensing of the archeological excavations at the site, has effectively stopped work on the multi-million euro project.

Lawyers for Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council told the court delays were already costing the council €100,000 a week in penalty fees payable to the contractor and no further stoppages could be tolerated.

Council chairman Donal Marren yesterday said the financial burden came on top of huge demands on personnel which were crippling other aspects of the council's work.

The FG councillor said: "The professional staff engineers, planners, legal people, the whole transportation department are spending their days on this. It's taking up an enormous amount of time and it is having a knock-on effect on other services."

Mr Marren said "searching questions" would be asked of management at Friday's meeting to find out how question marks could have been allowed fall over the project after so much money and time had been invested in it.

"We have spent in excess of €6 million on archeological excavations on that site. I don't think you would find resources like that put into a site from ancient Greece or Rome. And, after everything, we run into trouble on a technicality. We need to know if the correct procedures were followed."

Mr Marren said a firm message would be delivered that the earliest possible High Court hearing must be sought. "We will be telling them to be ready whenever a date is given. We will be saying be ready to go in the morning if necessary."

Environment Minister Martin Cullen, from whom the High Court will seek explanations for decisions surrounding the Carrickmines excavations, made no statement yesterday but is also understood to be pushing for an early hearing. If the road survives the High Court challenge, however, it may yet face a further test in the form of an ongoing EC investigation into the affair.

The EC environment section, which launched its own inquiry last autumn on foot of complaints about the way the environmental impact statement on the road was prepared, yesterday said it would take "some time" to consider all the issues.

A spokesman said the commission had asked the Government to respond to questions it raised by the beginning of last November but a response had only been received in the past fortnight.