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An Taisce has made a formal complaint to the European Commission
that plans for a highway between Dublin and Derry involve
a 'transboundary breach' of the EU’s directive requiring
strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of major projects.
It also claims that the directive is being breached by the
National Roads Authority (NRA) in pursuing plans for more
motorways and dual-carriageways and seeks 'compliance action'
on an alleged breach of the Habitats Directive by the planned
New Ross bypass in Co Wexford.
Describing this bypass as 'the largest single intervention
in an area of sensitive ecology and landscape', the complaint
notes that it would include a high-level bridge 4km south
of New Ross in place of an original, more modest route immediately
adjacent to the town.
The bridge "cuts through the hill at Camlin on the Co
Wexford side and passes over the river Barrow, candidate Special
Area of Conservation (SAC), to the Pink Rock in Co Kilkenny
within sight of the area around the President John F Kennedy
family farmstead at Dunganstown".
It notes that a legal challenge to An Bord Pleanála’s approval
of this scheme failed in the High Court on March 2nd and says
the judgment of Mr Justice Hedigan failed to have regard to
the review terms of the EU directive on environmental impact
assessment.
An Taisce claims the NRA “has been given virtually autonomous
legal status by the Irish Government to plan, seek consents
for and funding for motorway/dual-carriageway schemes, both
contained in the National Development Plan and even not”.
These included the Atlantic motorway/dual-carriageway from
Letterkenny, Co Donegal, running via Sligo, Knock airport,
Tuam, Ennis, Limerick, Mallow, Cork and Waterford, connecting
with the New Ross bypass, with a new N30 link to the N11 bypassing
Clonroche, Co Wexford.
Further sections of the N11 and N2 were to be upgraded to
motorway standard. “As in the case of New Ross, a genuinely
needed bypass is being used as the pretext for constructing
massive inter-regional motorways or dual-carriageways,” An
Taisce says.
In a letter to EU environment commissioner Janez Potocnik,
it notes that Co Meath alone would have four motorways running
through it.
“The Irish Government is also already committed to making
extensive contribution to a new dual-carriageway running through
Northern Ireland from the Monaghan border to Derry and the
upgrading of the Belfast-Larne link,” An Taisce writes.
“The NRA is at advanced contract negotiation for the 80km
Tuam to Crusheen sections of the Atlantic Corridor and the
New Ross bypass” it says - adding that plans for the M20 Limerick-Mallow-Cork
section had been lodged with Bord Pleanála along with the
Cork to Killarney N21.
Rather than scaling down schemes to reflect the lack of exchequer
funding, the NRA and Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey were
“actively working on a mechanism to subvert Government borrowing
limits in finding a means to proceed with the road programme”.
Proceeding would “create a debt mountain for the next generation
on top of that already incurred through the Irish banking
and property collapse . . . at a time when the decarbonisation
of power generation and transport ought to be the greatest
priority”.
Source - The Irish Times
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