Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)

The big challenge we have is the growth in businesses and in the number of people having to travel to work in Limerick, Mallow or Cork and the resulting huge volume of traffic on this road. The road was fine 50 years ago, in particular from Cork to Mallow and Mallow to the Limerick boundary, but it is now past its sell-by date. It is important that the project be expedited. For instance, I travel to Mallow to get a 6.05 a.m. train to Dublin on a Tuesday morning and at 5.30 a.m., the volume of traffic against me is one long line from Blarney to Mallow. I am therefore asking for more definitive dates for when we will go through the planning process. The other issue is that a lot of land is totally locked up now-----

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