MCDONALD’S Restaurants of Ireland is accelerating the development of new branches with plans to open four new “drive thru” restaurants in the next six months. The first of these will form part of the new private motorway services area currently being developed at Cashel, just off Junction 8 of the M8 Dublin-Cork motorway. The new facility will also include a Topaz petrol filling station.

McDonald’s will follow up in midsummer with a drive through at Liffey Valley Retail Park in west Dublin and two more in the autumn at Gulliver’s Retail Park, Santry, and Millfield shopping centre in Balbriggan, Co Dublin.

Nigel McGuire, head of developments at McDonald’s, said it planned to add 20 new restaurants over the next four to five years with the focus on drive through locations.

The company now operates 77 restaurants in Ireland, 41 of which are drive through outlets.

The first drive through in Europe opened at Nutgrove shopping centre in Rathfarnham in 1985. Most of the growth in the coming years will be concentrated on drive through restaurants which cost around €2 million to develop.

Supermacs has a greater number of fast food outlets in Ireland than McDonald’s though some of them are low volume locations.

Burger King and KFC each have more than 30 branches.

Adrian Crean, McDonald’s finance director in Ireland, said it was always looking for new opportunities in this country and would be investing around €8 million annually in new branches over the coming years. In addition, along with its franchisees, it would be continuing its aggressive re-imaging programme which would see all their restaurants benefitting by the end of 2012.