Company apologises after saying motorway opening would be delayed

The managing director of National Toll Roads yesterday apologised for a statement which cast doubt on the State's ability to complete the inter-urban motorway programme by 2010.

Kyran Hurley said a statement that an interlinking section of the M7 and M8 Dublin-to-Cork and Dublin-to-Limerick motorways would take until 2011 to be completed, "was a mistake".

The statement was issued by National Toll Roads' construction associate Celtic Roads Group (CRG).

In announcing that it had won a €300 million contract to build a wishbone-shaped M7/M8 motorway section near Portlaoise, CRG also announced construction would take four years. It said the road would not be open to traffic until 2011.

The comment on the time-scale surprised the National Roads Authority which has repeatedly said the State's inter-urban motorway programme linking Dublin with the regional cities would be completed in full by its revised deadline of 2010.

CRG is jointly owned by National Toll Roads which owns the East and West Link bridges, builders Ascon, and Royal Bam Group of the Netherlands. It has additional links with European partners Iridium/ACS Dragados and SMIF.

Following requests to CRG for clarification about the timescale for the M7/M8 project, Mr Hurley of National Toll Roads said the initial statement "was a mistake".

The real timescale for the motorway would see it finished by September 2010. "We did not mean to cast doubt on the NRA," he told The Irish Times.

The M7/M8 motorway will link Portlaoise to Culahill on the M8 and Portlaoise to Castletown on the M7. It involves the provision of 41km of new motorway. It also includes about three kilometres of single carriageway link roads and about 15km of side roads, three level separated junctions and a motorway-to-motorway interchange.

It is expected to cut about 30 minutes off the journey times between Dublin and Cork and Dublin and Limerick. Towns which will be bypassed include Abbeyleix and Mountrath.

The new motorway is to be built as a public-private partnership and motorists will have to pay a toll. CRG will be required to maintain the road over the life of the concession which is understood to be 30 years.

The State's inter-urban roads programme was initially to have been completed by 2007 for about €6.3 billion but was revised first to a completion date of 2012 and then, following the allocation of additional resources, to 2010. The final cost of the inter-urban motorway programme is expected to be in the region of €18 to €20 billion.