Sculpture restrictions after traffic chaos outside Cork Airport

Time restrictions have been imposed on the construction of a multi-coloured paper-aeroplane sculpture project on the roundabout outside Cork Airport after rush-hour traffic chaos.

Cork County Council apologised to motorists for the delays experienced on the N27 earlier this week arising out of the works.

Thousands of people working in Cork Airport business park, and passengers trying to catch flights, were caught in hour-long traffic jams.

Following a meeting between council engineers and the contractors yesterday, the on-site working hours have now been restricted to between 10am and 4pm.

A council spokesman said the restrictions were unlikely to affect the six-week time schedule.

But Cllr Marcia d’Alton said the entire situation had been handled very badly.

“This is a really busy roundabout at the best of times and to carry out these works without advance notice is not acceptable.”

The airport roundabout project is one of two roundabout landscaping projects awarded in a single contract by Cork County Council late last year. Under designs prepared by Wendy Kirkpatrick and Cathal O’Meara of Cathal O’Meara Landscape Architects, the Halfway roundabout on the N71 Cork to Bandon will be landscaped and replanted.

However, the airport roundabout is set for a massive upgrade.

Five brightly-coloured bespoke steel sculptures, each about the size of a small car and representing stages in the construction of a paper aeroplane, will be installed in intervals on a circular rising mound, which will reach a height of up to two-metres.