Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, to the House to hear what I have to say. I will make it brief and to the point. We need to have ambition and vision for the greater metropolitan area of Cork. We now have a situation where the south link road is effectively at capacity with about 87,000 vehicles using that stretch of road every day. About 70,000 cars are using the Jack Lynch Tunnel every day. The Minister will come back to me and point out that the Government is going to invest a large amount of money in the Dunkettle interchange. Of course, that is not planning for the future, that is catching up with the present. These issues are a result of the demand that is now placed on the Dunkettle interchange. It is clear and obvious that Cork needs an outer, northern ring road and it needs to be planned. Initial planning was sought for this a number of years ago, however it was shelved in the downturn.

We are now in a strong upturn. We need to put in place solid, coherent plans to address the issue of the imbalance in Cork city and the Munster region. We need an outer, northern ring road from Killydonoghoe, north of the Glanmire bypass, stretching right across the periphery of the northern city, over Kerry Pike and down to Poulavone. We should now bring about the plans that were there and enact them quickly to ensure sustainable planning and development is put in place that will not diminish the chances of us actually building a northern ring road.

All of this is in the context of the expansion of the city boundary. We are going to have all this particular area inside the city limits so it is appropriate now for the Minister to use his office to show his imagination and vision and his capacity to look beyond the local issues of the Stepaside Garda station and plan for real regional development. The region and city is completely dependent on the tunnel at the moment. If anything happens to it, or if there is a catastrophic accident in the tunnel, or it is closed for a long time because of maintenance, or if there was major structural damage done to the tunnel which meant it closed for a long time, the region would stop. It is the only major arterial route across the River Lee from north to south. The deep water port and the airport are in the south. All the hospitals and universities are in the south, as is the institute of technology. It is the gateway to the broader south-west region. We are completely dependent on the tunnel for traversing from north to south.

A northern ring route should be developed to ensure we are not dependent on the tunnel. That would stimulate sustainable development over the short and medium term. Nearly all of the industrial development in the city is now taking place south of the river. It is almost impossible to get major multinationals or large companies to locate in the IDA centres on the northern side of the river. Kilbarry is a ghost town. There is now barley planted in it again. It is one mile from Patrick Street and it is growing barley. That is the contribution that park is making to development on the north side of the city.

For many reasons, we need a northern ring route. I implore and urge the Minister to be imaginative, like in the old days when he had the land use and transportation study, LUTS, which clearly marked out a vision for the future in planning and sustainable transport. We need the Minister to step up to the plate and ensure that we revisit the national plan including the northern ring road.

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