Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will try to do the topic justice in one minute. Management and Government policy has gone down the route of an outer bypass and pursued no other solution. All of the other solutions are premised on the outer bypass, which is about to be quashed by An Bord Pleanála. A decision will have to be made on whether to send the proposal back to An Bord Pleanála after the board ignored what management in Galway city and county councils called a technical or narrow issue, namely, climate change. That is the mentality that is in charge of transformative action. It is not possible to get transformative action with that kind of mentality. We need leadership. Park-and-ride facilities cannot work without lifting traffic from the roads. Traffic can be lifted from the roads in a myriad of ways, for example, light rail, park-and-ride facilities, school transport, etc.

Today, I heard that the council was finally going to consider a new road for the R336 separately from the outer bypass. It has taken 20 or 30 years for the council to see that it should be considering that route independently.

See this speech in context