Freeze plans for road which can’t be funded

REPRESENTATIVES of the Northern Distributor Concerned Residents (NDCR) group are travelling to Dublin this week to ask Transport Minister, Leo Varadkar, to freeze plans for the road and save villages, homes and land.
Four representatives from Parteen and Clonlara are meeting the Minister and they will be putting thier case for stopping any further progress on a road which the government has accepted cannot be funded and may not be built for more than a decade.
“We’re asking the minister to meet us with an open mind and to take on board our concerns. “The minister has stated publicly that he will not get involved in the route selection process as it’s not his job to choose the routes for local roads.
“It has also been publicly stated that there is no funding in place and no immediate prospect of any funding for the actual construction of this road”, a spokesperson for the NDCR told the Limerick Post.
“While we fully understand that he doesn’t want to get involved in the selection of a route, we will be asking him to stop the process where it is, because our concern is that if the route selection process is completed, it will have a disastrous impact on the communities involved. “People will not be able to obtain planning permission for improvement works to their farms or businesses, the houses and land in the area will become effectively worthless and we will be left with a situation where we have many of the downsides of the road, without the road ever being built”.
The group said they also intend to “raise the lack of engagement we have had from the relevant council officials. We are going to ask once more that the constraints study be released to the public so that we can see what justification they are putting forward for the construction of the road.
“We have not seen this report to date. As it stands we have a situation where we have the council pushing ahead, spending money on plans for a road which no-one has the money to build and which apparently can’t go any other route”.
The group claims that the route “will cut Ardnacrusha off from the village school, divide the village of Parteen in half, increase the flooding problems in Clonlara and all this for a road which we are told is needed, yet no-one will go on record to say why it is needed or produce one single shred of evidence to show why it is needed.
“We are told that even our elected representatives in the Dail and on Clare County Council cannot have sight of the report. It’s ridiculous and it’s undemocratic. If the road is justified then produce the justifications and lets have the debate, but at the moment the consultation is purely a one way street,” the spokesman said.