Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like previous speakers, I am very familiar with this stretch of road. It is 24 km long but a lot of it is not as wide as the Minister suggests and there is no hard shoulder on about a third of it. There are 25 significant right-turning junctions on a route that has more traffic on it than sections of the M8 between junctions 3 and 4. I heard the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, make the point earlier that we are an island economy but we are also a regional economy. This is a critical interconnector between the Tralee to Cork hub and it is critical that we invest in it.

Twenty years ago, we identified a route corridor but it has stood in splendid isolation. That was the level of planning we had embarked on in the early part of this century but there has been no progress. We had the economic crash but, fortuitously, we are now in a position where we have funds. The traffic counts on the road are such that it has a greater claim on funding than many roads that are currently under construction. In the context of the mid-term review of the NDP, it is critical that we get back to planning, reactivate the route, provide funding to TII to do design work and try to make progress. We are not asking for construction today or tomorrow, but a sticking plaster is being proposed by TII.

This will not save lives. It will cost lives.

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