David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her encouraging response. I am very grateful for that. As I said, we need housing badly. I am concerned that the delay in upgrading this roadway could put many of these houses at risk. That is very important.

This site is bounded by a rail link at one end and a dual carriageway on the other side. There is an airport that is not so far away at only 20 minutes, a seaport, two universities and, if the housing goes ahead, plenty of houses. It also has water and wastewater facilities from the time when Amgen was there, power, is dead level and is laid out with roads internally. It is ready to go. If the IDA manages to encourage a developer or industry to move to the site shortly, and it arrives but finds it cannot use this site - I understand this has happened a few times already - because road construction is not up to standard, will the State then move on it? Is that what it will take? It is a little like the Kerry Group headquarters that is down the road, which had to put road construction in place in order to make it happen. It is a chicken and egg situation. My argument is that we should move on this. Work has already gone on. There are also people living on this corridor who own land and houses. They cannot sell the land or houses because they are, in effect, frozen until a final decision is made.

We also have the Celtic Interconnector, where we are linking with France. That particular cable is coming under the sea and roadway and is landing on this site. I suggested to EirGrid a while ago that it put its converter station on the site, which it is doing. The site will also have that kind of power plus a very powerful Internet connection that will go along with that. This makes the site extraordinarily attractive but it has been sitting there for 15 years. As I said, housing is at risk and the road is not safe. It is very dangerous. I call on the TII, if it is listening, to get its act together and put some interim works in place, as it promised me it would a year ago, to make that road safer. My worry is there will be a pile-up someday and there will be loss of life.

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