NRA seeks additional €500 million

The National Roads Authority (NRA) is to ask the Government for an additional €500 million per year, which it claims to need to speed up delivery of the National Roads programme.

Chairman of the authority, Peter Malone, said the money could be spent bringing forward projects from the end of the Government strategy Transport 21, starting and completing them considerably ahead of schedule.

Mr Malone said the money would be spent on roads such as the N11 south of Rathnew in Co Wicklow, the N21 Adare bypass in Co Limerick, as well as the N20 bypass of Mallow in Co Cork, among others.

Currently the National Roads programme priority is to complete the inter-urban routes from Dublin to the regional cities of Waterford, Limerick, Cork and Galway.

Transport 21 provides that a western or "Atlantic Corridor" linking Donegal, via Galway, to Limerick and Cork would then be completed over the following five years. Although not strictly on the Atlantic Corridor, former transport Minister Martin Cullen was keen that Waterford would be included on this route by a motorway level link to Cork.

But last week, at the opening of the cross-border N1/A1 road, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said it had been decided at a North-South Ministerial Council meeting to prioritise further cross-border routes including remaining sections of Euroroute 01. This eastern seaboard route which encompasses the cross-border road, links Larne in Co Antrim to Rosslare, Co Wexford.

In addition, the Taoiseach has said that there is a plan to upgrade the development of the N2 to motorway standard, serving Northern Ireland and Letterkenny, bringing a motorway standard route to the northwest.

Such is the volume of road schemes currently being developed by the National Roads Authority that last year it was asked by Government to ensure that its individual schemes were not competing with each other for the attention of construction firms. Such a situation could lead to road price inflation.

But the authority told the Government that it believed the construction industry could well handle all the schemes then on offer and that in fact another €500 million a year could be spent before inflationary pressure was felt.

Now Mr Malone has decided to ask the Government for that extra €500 million a year to speed up the building programme. He told The Irish Timesthat the move would bring the annual budget to about €2.1 billion.

A glance at the State's road building programme indicates that there would be no shortage of schemes on which the money could be spent.

Not counting schemes on the main inter-urban motorways, to the border, Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford, there are some 123 further schemes in the National Roads programme.

The Adare bypass, mentioned by Mr Malone, is currently at planning stage. Works on the Blarney to Mallow and Mallow to Croom stretches of road are currently at final design stage.

In Co Wicklow compulsory purchase orders have already been made for a link between the Arklow bypass and a bypass of Rathnew, replacing a notorious 10-mile single carriageway route on which there are frequent fatalities.

However, regardless of the additional priorities which have been given to the authority, the Department of Transport appeared to play down the prospect of additional funding yesterday. In a statement to The Irish Times the department refers to "significant funding" already in place and warns that accelerating any project could delay others.

The statement reads: "The structure of Transport 21 funding was agreed with the Department of Finance and represents significant Exchequer funding for the sector. Based on the state of preparedness of the projects at the time of the launch, the priorities within Transport 21 take account of the funding available for each of the 10 years and of the need to keep disruption to the minimum level possible during the construction periods.

"In view of the set amount of funding available for each year, acceleration of any project would result in the deferral or slowing down of other projects in the Transport 21 framework."