Hauliers hit out at tolls as Fermoy by-pass opens

Road bosses came under fire today as they turned the first sod in the construction of Ireland’s fourth major toll motorway.

The N8 Rathcormac and Fermoy by-pass, part of the southern motorway from Cork to Dublin, is one of 11 new public-private fee-paying schemes being developed by the National Roads Authority (NRA).

Road hauliers said a more equitable deal should be struck for trucks and heavy local users who would frequently use the fee-paying roads.

“We don’t want to be in towns but if the alternative toll is too much, that is also a problem,” Jimmy Quinn of the Irish Road Haulage Association said.

The NRA and the National Development Finance Agency have said motorists will pay around €300m in tolls each year which will finance the road projects.

“It means the NRA have achieved the milestone of introducing €500m of private sector finances into the national roads programme,” Peter Malone, chair of the NRA, said on the new public-private partnership in Fermoy.

Transport Minister Seamus Brennan said that by the end of 2007 all sections of the N7/N8 southern motorway would be completed or already under construction.

Mr Brennan said 64 kilometres of the 243km road was completed, 59km was under construction and 120km was left to start building.

The €220m Fermoy by-pass, which was funded by the exchequer to €133m, was designed to relieve a major traffic bottleneck in Co Cork.

Mr Brennan said the 17.5km new route would remove at least 17,000 vehicles each day from Fermoy town centre and would cut down on journey times.

A group of locals, under the Fermoy By-Pass Group, had campaigned for the road to be toll-free.

The people from Rathcormac, Fermoy and Watergrasshill in Co Cork said if it was a fee-paying road a number of motorists would continue to add to traffic congestion in the towns in avoiding the tolls.

Mr Quinn said when the NRA’s road plan is completed there will be around four toll-plazas en-route from Cork to Dundalk.

“People would be paying an awful lot of money in a short space of time,” he said.

Mr Quinn said many trucks currently do not use the Drogheda toll road, as they only have to use it for a short space and it adds to the cost of trips to a local cement factory.

The M1 Drogheda by-pass became the third road in the country, after the East and West link bridges in Dublin, to be tolled.

The Kilcock-Kinnegad motorway from Dublin to Galway will be fee-paying, as will the Fermoy by-pass, as part of the 11 toll projects being established.

The latest by-pass brings to four the number of public-private partnerships which the NRA have entered.

Under the National Roads Programme some €8bn has been guaranteed for the nation’s roads over the next five-years.

Some €6.8bn will come from exchequer funds and €1.2bn through public-private partnerships.