Frustrations grow over lack of progress with ring road for Limerick town

A DISTRIBUTOR road is “essential” for Newcastle West, local councillor Jerome Scanlan has declared.

And he argued that the by-pass being planned by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) on the north side of town, would not resolve the traffic problems on the south side.

“Get the ring road built,” demanded another local councillor Michael Collins who was “shocked and dismayed” that any question mark was being placed over the project.

“It is the single most important piece of infrastructure for the county town,” he said. The route had been selected, the project was included in the Local Area Plan and money had been allocated to identifying the docking points, he said. “Has that work been done?”, he demanded.

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The councillors’ comments came at the February meeting of the Newcastle West Municipal District where the council’s senior executive engineer, Robert Gallagher, said staff were working on developing a new local area plan for the town for later this year and he couldn’t speak “in isolation” about a distributor road.

“What you are saying is there will not be a distributor road,” said Cllr Tom Ruddle.

“I didn’t say there would be no distributor road,” Mr Gallagher responded. But all aspects of the Local Area Plan, including the distributor road, would be reviewed as part of the new Local Area Plan, he pointed out.

The distributor road had not been built because “there is no funding source behind it”. “If we had the distributor road in the plan, who is going to build it?”, he asked.

The proposed by-pass, he added, could be expected to remove 50-55% of traffic from the town and the TII believes “it is better to get a bypass”.

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“The TII have moved on to do bypasses of Abbeyfeale and Newcastle West,” Cllr John Sheahan said. But, he continued, if Newcastle West is to reach its predicted growth of 30% between now and 2028, a distributor road is needed on the south side of town. A distributor road is also needed in Abbeyfeale, he said.

“Bypasses and distributor roads are both needed,” he added.

“It is there in the plan. It is not either/or,” declared Cllr Collins.

All six councillors agreed the issue needs to be supported and driven by the council and have now forwarded it to a Special Policy Committee for further discussion.