FIRST announced over a decade ago, the much anticipated Coonagh-Knockalisheen Distributor Road construction effort could once again get underway this year.
That’s according to Green Party Transport Minister Eamon Ryan, who was speaking in the Dáil last week.
After works being stalled in 2022, the Department of Transport approved the tender of a new construction contract late last year, estimating the tender process would take around four months to complete with the hope that works would begin in spring 2024.
These tenders, however, according to Minster Ryan, are still currently being assessed, leaving the timeframe for the beginning or completion of the works still unknown.
Encompassing the construction of a new distributor road, cycleways, footpaths, and verges between the Ennis Road and the Knockalisheen Road, the scheme is part of the wider Limerick regeneration plan.
Despite the efforts of residents in the area pushing for the completion of the project in 2021, works were halted in 2022 as a result of the contractor, Roadbridge, entering receivership.
The Green Party leader, answering a parliamentary question put to him by Limerick Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan, acknowledged the importance of the project to local residents, saying the completion of the road “would allow the local community improved access to various transport modes as well as better local access via the Distributor Road project”.
He also pointed out that, in the time since the halted construction in 2022, “works on the Ballygrennan Bridge, which is over the Galway-Ennis railway line, have completed”.
The issue around the road’s progress was brought up in the Dáil Deputy Quinlivan, who last year said “it is outrageous that this project still has not been completed. The project has been in play for more than a decade.”
