When the State-appointed National Roads Authority proposed its plans to upgrade existing national primary roads, the Government then basking in the glow of the fully healthy Celtic tiger, decided to overrule the NRA and come up with its own programme with commitments to far more ambitions and extravagant interurban motorway project with five spokes in the wheel, from Dublin to Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. This was to be constructed by 2006 at a cost of €6.8 billion. The programme is still only at the halfway stage. What was supposed to be €6.8 billion is now estimated to be a massive €16 billion. What was to have been completed in 2006 will not now be completed until 2010 at the earliest.