The northwest region has been left out of plans for £1 billion worth of public private partnerships (PPPs) announced recently by the National Roads Authority.
The announcement follows the failure of the region to qualify for any of the key strategic road corridors identified in the National Development Plan. It also follows bad news for the region in the latest report of the Industrial Development Agency (IDA), which shows a net loss of 1,200 jobs last year.
According to the National Development Plan 2000 to 2006, launched by the Taoiseach last year, £4.7 billion is to be spent on upgrading the State's roads.
The best roads, motorways or high-grade dual carriageways are between Dublin and the cities of Belfast, Galway, Limerick, Cork, and Waterford. The Northwest region was alone in that it does not include a key strategic corridor.
Three PPPs were identified initially. They were the Waterford Bypass, the Limerick Southern Ring and the second crossing of the Liffey Valley at the West Link. Last week the National Roads Authority announced that it had identified a further eight new projects which could be funded in this way, but the closest one was a stretch of the N3 between Clonee and Kells.
The advantage of a public private partnership for roads is that they are designed, built, operated and financed by the private sector, which is not experiencing skills shortages to the same extent as the local authorities. As a result the roads are likely to be built before many other routes.
The news is the second blow for the region, coming as it does after the IDA annual report for 1999 which confirmed fears that the economic boom was not spreading to the Northwest, at least in terms of new jobs.
Of the 18,000-plus jobs created by the IDA in 1999, fewer than 300 came to the Northwest, less than 2 per cent of the total. However, when closures and redundancies were factored in, it emerged that the region had a net jobs loss of 1,200.
The figures prompted a stinging rebuke of Government policy by the Fine Gael TD, Mr Dinny McGinley, who maintained that the Northwest has lagged behind other regions since 1993. There have been major job losses in Buncrana, Raphoe, Milford, the Finn Valley and south Donegal.
"At present a company locating in Dublin gets almost the same level of support as one locating in Donegal. This policy is leading to unbalanced regional development and distribution of jobs to the advantage of the east coast and the detriment of the Northwest," said Mr McGinley.
He called for good roads to the port of Larne and an extension of the upper Shannon basin tax incentives.