Leo Varadkar in Cork: Good news and bad

LEO VARADKAR, making his first visit to Cork as Taoiseach, brought good news from Dublin yesterday, when at a Chamber of Commerce and Irish Examiner business breakfast he announced that planning work on the long-awaited Cork-Limerick motorway was at last to be started.

It’s been estimated the 96-kilometre road could help to generate more than 5,000 jobs in the region, prevent some 120 crashes every year, and, as Mr Varadkar pointed out, change the perception that all roads lead to Dublin.

But let’s temper our delight just a little. The Taoiseach revealed that money had been found to start work now on route options, design and planning work, adding that budgeting for land purchase and construction costs — the really big money — would be done for the next 10-year capital plan, in which the M20 would have the “utmost priority”.