Resistance in Kilkenny to motorway plan

There's a monster coming from the city and it will eat up everything in sight - trees, houses and even farms, declares a letter in this week's Kilkenny People.

The monster is the Dublin-Waterford motorway, or dual carriageway, which politicians in Kilkenny fought vigorously to secure last year lest the National Roads Authority decided to route it down the east coast.

Now the same public representatives may be wishing they had kept their mouths shut. The motorway project, one of five inter-urban links to be built as part of the National Development Plan, is the subject of the biggest rural revolt Kilkenny has seen for years.

Community meetings have been held almost nightly over the past several weeks as part of a campaign of opposition to the road.

At the latest public meeting, in the village of Clara on Thursday night, about 300 people turned out and applauded as speaker after speaker condemned the project. Two of the motorway routes being considered run close to the village.

The majority of speakers were farmers who insisted that no compensation rate can adequately offset the damage done by a highway running through the middle of a holding.

"If you put a motorway through a 100acre farm, what's the cost of that to the farmer?" asked one man. "That farm is worth £1 million at least on the open market - Kildare land. You put a motorway through it and it's devalued by £300,000."

While the relevance of Kildare land prices may have been lost on the villagers of Clara, it was a telling contribution. One person after another said compensation was not the issue, but somehow the word kept coming up.

The meeting was organised by a national umbrella body of anti-motorway groups, Cam-T-Campaign Against Motorways and Tolls - which is considering running candidates in the next general election.

THE GROUP'S chairman, Matty Byrne, said they were in favour of road progress but there were "sensible alternatives" to motorways. Cam-T wants existing roads upgraded and to see greatly increased investment in the rail network.

Mr Byrne was joined at the top table by the Kilkenny county chairman of the Irish Farmers' Association, Gerard Mullins, who offered a novel view of what constituted fair compensation to affected landholders. "It's what the farmer feels it's worth to him," he said.

"A farm is not just land. It's what it means to the individual himself. It's there for generations and he wants to stay there and to earn an honest income. You cannot put a value on that sort of thing."

This was challenged by Michael Egan, the NRA's head of corporate affairs. Mr Egan, who withstood a barrage of criticism to earn a round of applause at the end of the meeting, said buying land was the same as buying a car or a pint in the pub. "It's not what the barman thinks it's worth to you, the price is what the market dictates."

John Fitzgerald, a Kilmacow-based engineer who has addressed many of the public meetings held recently, said he had been "dragged into this thing" when about 30 people from his locality had asked him to assist with submissions to Kilkenny County Council.

"Not one person mentioned compensation to me. They're all concerned about the destruction of their farms and the division of their communities. Farms and businesses that have taken centuries to painstakingly put together."

He claimed there was massive overprovision in the planned motorways, which would be "80 per cent empty" in 20 years, based on figures in an NRA study of 1998.

Another speaker, Michael Prendergast, referred to a project in Sweden which involved putting in an extra lane on existing roads, allowing traffic in one direction to overtake, and steel ropes in the middle which forced vehicles safely back to their own side of the road. Mr Egan said they were monitoring the experiment.

Pat Murphy said anyone who doubted the opposition to motorways only had to look at the size of the meeting. The roads project was being driven by private money and should be put on hold for six months to allow for proper consultation with communities.

Campaigners who travelled from elsewhere in the country included Hans van Lente, a member of the Hands Across the Corrib and the Galway Environmental Alliance, who said Ireland had an environment and culture second to none when he immigrated from the Netherlands 35 years ago.

"What is afoot here is total economic and cultural suicide," he said to cheers. "A small, beautiful island nation does not need a network of concrete Berlin Walls criss-crossing the country, dividing up communities and destroying everything that is special. The greatest asset of this country is that it is different."

Opposition to tolls was also a recurring theme, but Mr Egan stressed no decision had yet been taken on whether to toll the Dublin-Waterford road. Up to five routes are being considered although some converge at various points.

The project is due to be completed in 2007.