Construction BUSINESS

The Taoiseach has backed the delivery of the Cork to Limerick motorway and other recommendations of the Shannon Estuary Economic Taskforce, David Keniry writes.

In an opinion piece in the Business Post on why a Department of Infrastructure will be a part of the Fine Gael manifesto Taoiseach Simon Harris wrote that we have some fantastic plans for infrastructure and as a country are in a fantastic position financially to deliver on them.

He said, ‘I’m anti-carbon, not anti-car and want to see the most modern methods of carbon-reducing construction used to deliver the M20 motorway between Cork and Limerick so that in the 2030s all the electric vehicles driving between our second and third cities will prove once and for all that all roads don’t lead to Dublin.”

Last week, Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) Peter Walsh told the Irish Examiner the Cork to Limerick motorway and the M28 Cork to Ringaskiddy motorway project could be hit with delays over funding uncertainty.

Walsh said “We have only two schemes with An Bord Pleanála — Galway city and Slane.

“We would very much like to get more schemes into that pipeline but the current circumstances with funding constraints has resulted in a bit of a delay in the progression of that pipeline.”

On the M20 he added “We have the preferred route almost identified but I don’t want to raise too many expectations about how quickly we can get through the planning process. “It has been a torturous process over the last few years and we don’t expect that to be an easy process.”

“But I think Limerick City and County Council have identified a very good mobility solution for connecting the two cities and we look forward to seeing it going through the planning process and onto construction.”

He concluded: “The Department of Transport is very supportive of the portfolio of projects that we are trying to bring forward, but I suppose there is only so much to go around and priorities have to be made and at the moment the roads programme and particularly the major schemes in the pipeline have had to take a little bit of a back seat, but we would hope to be able to move on with that in the near future.”

The delivery of the M20 motorway between Cork and Limerick was a key recommendation of the Shannon Estuary Economic Taskforce chaired by Barry O’Sullivan. The independent Shannon Estuary Economic Taskforce was established in response to a Programme for Government commitment to support the region in devising an economic development plan based on the Shannon Estuary’s comparative strategic advantages. The final report of the independent Taskforce included recommendations relating to offshore wind energy, onshore renewable energy, security of energy supply and cost, transport, logistics and connectivity, and tourism.

In his piece for the Business Post the Taoiseach added: ‘The Shannon Estuary Taskforce has given us the formula to do with clean energy what we have done with good food. As the London Underground was being built, Ireland was starving.

Today we grow and export ten times more food than our population needs. The Shannon Taskforce proposes doing the same with offshore wind. The technology is there to have fixed and floating wind farms off our west coast harnessing the power of the Atlantic, using it in our homes, and then exporting the surplus for sale through our interconnectors with France and Britain.

One interconnector with France is already under construction. President Macron and I agreed this week to get our teams working on a joint plan that will consider a second interconnector.

However, those vast Atlantic wind farms won’t happen if we don’t have the port and freight rail infrastructure on the island to receive, load and service the mammoth ships and equipment needed for such an endeavour. Right now we don’t.

So, do I as Taoiseach set five or six different government departments off in different directions to make it happen, or could one Department of Infrastructure, properly mandated and resourced, be a better way to do it?’.

The European Infrastructure Conference returns to Dublin’s Clayton Hotel Ballsbridge on 14th November 2024.