Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Walsh and Mr. O'Neill and thank them for engaging with us. Before Christmas, the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, visited County Clare and met Bridget Fogarty. She hails from the village of Crusheen in north-east Clare. In June 2018, she got a devastating phone call to say her husband, Michael, had been killed at exit 13 on the M18. Our guests cannot possibly know every exit but this is one they might be familiar with because wherever you go in the country, a slip road or exit way from a motorway is usually a long, sweeping section of road where drivers can simply enter or exit the motorway system using their mirrors and their visuals. In this case, it is almost a 90° exit and it is pretty similar for joining. I think the joining and exit lanes are half the length they should be. They were all built to specification, given this is one of the roads in Ireland that was not originally built as a motorway. It was a dual carriageway and national road - an N road at the time - and it was upgraded to motorway status, but it was built to an older specification. It is lethal. It has taken lives and there have been many accidents. Indeed, on the morning the Minister of State visited the site, he sat into a car with Bridget Fogarty and they drove to the junction several times. I think he was startled by how dangerous the alignment is.

This has arisen time and again at council meetings in Clare and it is a TII function to look at it. I have sent in reams of paperwork relating to the coroner's court from Bridget Fogarty's family. It is very much legal paperwork but it highlights that this junction is deficient and the accidents cannot all be blamed on driver behaviour. Most of the blame lies in how the junction is configured. Simply, for those who are not familiar with it, drivers are not able to exit or join at any great speed and it is very dangerous.

Will TII re-examine this? There needs to be some plan to remediate this junction. Any time I drive on the motorway system past Athlone, there are a couple of kilometres where it ceases to be a motorway.

The speed limit reduces to 100 km/h and then increases again. Something like this could be an interim solution until we devise a new junction layout. Will the witnesses comment on that?