Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

The N24 national primary route is a vital social and economic corridor across the southern part of County Tipperary. It links Limerick and all points between to the major port of Rosslare and is a particularly important route for Tipperary town, Cahir, Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir.

Since 2003, which is 15 years ago, we have had promises of bypass roads for Tipperary town and Carrick-on-Suir and the upgrading of the roadway to motorway status. Minister after Minister has promised these developments and has met deputation after deputation in the county but they have failed to deliver. Most recently, a very detailed case was made to the Minister, Deputy Ross, showing how a project combining the M20 from Limerick to Cork and the N24 from Limerick to Cahir could be done with a saving of hundreds of millions of euro. That deputation, too, has fallen on deaf ears. Again in the 2019 roads programme there is no mention of the N24. It has been overlooked again. Worse still, the next ten-year so-called pipeline programme makes it clear that the upgrading of the N24 will be at least another ten years hence. That is 25 years altogether. The roadway and improvements to it are effectively in permanent suspension.

This is unacceptable. It is detrimental to the towns of Tipperary and Carrick-on-Suir. Some 7,000 vehicles a day, including heavy goods vehicles, choke the main street of Tipperary town and choke O'Mahony Avenue in Carrick-on-Suir. This traffic brings no economic value or advantage to the towns and indeed damages the towns as locations for retail, business and industry. It is no wonder that these towns have levels of unemployment four or five times the national average, in excess of 20%. They have been neglected by this and previous Governments. I ask the Minister to approve the upgrading of the N24 immediately, including the bypasses of Tipperary town and Carrick-on-Suir, and to establish a jobs task force to tackle the very serious levels of unemployment in both towns.

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