Offaly councillors oppose road upgrade which would ‘cause an awful lot of trouble’

A number of Offaly councillors have voiced their opposition to a road upgrade which would “cause an awful lot of trouble”.

The potential upgrade of the R402, which runs from Edenderry to Tullamore, to a national road was discussed at the April meeting of the Edenderry Municipal District.

The Cathaoirleach, Fine Gael councillor Liam Quinn, raised the issue and asked what would be required for the upgrade to happen. He also outlined why he would oppose such an upgrade.

Cllr Quinn said: “This was kind of discussed here previously and I didn’t really fight it or make much of an issue on it because I didn’t think it would go anywhere.

“Can I ask the engineers what would be required for that because I don’t think it’s something I would agree to.

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“My understanding of it is it creates an awful lot of trouble as regards getting planning permission.

“If you’re a local landowner, even if you live on the lane of a national road, it’s very difficult to get planning.”

He continued by saying that Offaly County Council should look to prioritise the issues that exist on local roads across the district.

“To be fair to everyone in the chamber at the minute, we’ve looked to meet the Department [of Transport] about our roads issues as is.

“We’ve an awful lot of work to do upgrading all of our third class roads and smaller roads and I don’t want to put an awful lot of effort into something that number one, might not happen and number two, dilutes the work we’re trying to do to get funding for other roads that are terribly problematic in the area at the minute.”

In response to Cllr Quinn, Executive Engineer Rory Moore outlined the challenges that would be faced in upgrading the road.

Mr Moore said: “The one thing that would be directed to my mind is the provision of space to carry out such a scheme.

“All the national roads that have been constructed, there’s quite a wide carriageway plus a hard shoulder required to facilitate the construction of a national road.

“If you look at here and Daingean and even further along to Tullamore, the amount of enabling works required to achieve that width, to construct or bring a road up to the classification of a national road would be extensive in terms of land take.

“It would be very, very doubtful that the Department would consider that feasible in this day and age if you were to enter into agreements with all of the landowners along that route to assess and take the necessary amount of land to be able to develop that.”

Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil councillor Claire Murray-Smale outlined why she had previously supported the upgrade of the road.

Cllr Murray-Smale said: “Before the local elections I thought this was something that would ultimately improve things for our roads budget.

“Maybe in my ignorance I thought that if we had a national route, that the money that we could get from that we could put into the smaller, regional routes and it could be an answer to a lot of problems that we have.”

She continued by saying that after conversations with council engineers, she realised that that funding would not be able to be used on local roads.

She also described the required acquisition of lands, which could be used for residential houses, as “counterproductive at best”.

Cllr Murray-Smale continued: “I suppose it could stop us from getting grants and funding that we can get to improve our local, rural towns and villages.

“So I suppose I’ve done a U-turn on it because it doesn’t make financial sense and it’s not feasible at all.

“It would be very counterproductive to what our roads budget is trying to do,” she concluded.

These sentiments were also echoed by Independent Ireland councillor Fergus McDonnell, who said that the money should be used to maintain existing local roads.