Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, I called for the Minister with responsibility for the Office of Public Works to come to the House to outline what exactly is involved in retaining protected structures. I have spoken to many in the north Clare area in the past 24 hours since the news broke about the National Roads Authority's decision to make €6 million available to demolish homes and businesses in order to eliminate what is probably the biggest bottleneck in the country at the moment, namely, Blake's Corner on the N67. However, there is an alternative to all of that, namely, to build a bypass of the town of Ennistymon. For some time an area has been reserved in the County Clare development plan to facilitate a bypass of Ennistymon, which would facilitate the 1 million plus visitors every year to the Cliffs of Moher and the many hundreds of thousands visiting our coastal communities of Fanore, Doolin and as far as Miltown Malbay. For the sake of an extra few million, a bypass of the town of Ennistymon must be put back on the agenda. I call on the Leader to request that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government or the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport come to the House to outline how he intends to deal with the biggest bottleneck on the N67 and to give an indication of why the NRA would not consider a bypass of the town of Ennistymon. A bypass is definitely back on the agenda and I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about it. We have dealt with the major primary road infrastructural projects. The bypasses of Ennis, Tuam and Gort are all well under way at this stage. We must identify towns that have been choked as a result of traffic, particularly rural towns that do not have the benefit of large populations. A million people visit the Cliffs of Moher every year but, unfortunately, the town of Ennistymon is not benefitting to the degree it should from that, simply because of the bottleneck on the N67. A bypass of the town would be most appropriate at this time.