Mr. Brendan Logue:

If one wants to cross, one has to watch the traffic for an opportunity where there is a gap and dash across. As one can imagine that opportunity is not available to elderly people.

There are also two aspects to the problem that are not dealt with in any of the material we have seen. First, there are the traffic jams in the morning and evening. In between, that is at the non-commuting times and at night, there is very fast-moving traffic which is averaging 70 km per hour in a 50 km per hour zone. Some of these are heavy goods vehicles, HGVs, carrying petrol and gas and I will leave to the committee to imagine the consequences of an accident in these circumstances.

We cannot see much progress happening at the moment and believe that eventually this blocked artery will lead to a political issue.

As Ms Uí Loinsigh has stated, air monitoring is a major issue and we have installed such a device at our own cost. If the air pollution is indicated to exceed EU levels, the local residents will take legal action against the county council and the Department, should that be necessary. I thank the Chairman and the committee members for listening to us.