M3 delays costing €1m a week - NRA

Delays in building the planned M3 toll-motorway through Co Meath are currently costing €1 million a week and have already amounted to about €70 million, the National Roads Authority (NRA) has claimed.

The NRA has also claimed that nine people have been killed on an existing 10-kilometre stretch of the main road in the vicinity of the Hill of Tara in the last 21 months.

The authority's plans to replace this road as the principal road in the region with the new motorway have brought it into direct conflict with archaeologists and conservationists concerned about the preservation and setting of the Hill of Tara.

A Supreme Court challenge to the motorway route was recently announced by Vincent Salafia of the Save Tara Skryne Valley campaign. Mr Salafia's High Court case was earlier dismissed by that court with costs estimated at about €500,000 being awarded against him. However, Mr Salafia has said he will take his case to the European Court, if necessary.

This weekend the NRA said it had hoped that work would have already started on the motorway by now. Spokesman Seán O'Neill said the cost of the delays in terms of money and human life "was incredible".

He said the figure of €1 million had been calculated in terms of lost business at either end of the route and in terms of lost time for commercial and commuting traffic in the area, as well as direct costs incurred by the NRA itself. The authority had conservatively estimated the loss at €1 million a week, which he calculated had so far cost in excess of €70 million and which was "rising all the time".

Mr O'Neill said it was significant that the 10-kilometre stretch of road northwards from Dunshaughlin had been the scene of nine fatalities in the last 21 months. He pointed to Garda and National Safety Council advice that suggested that long, largely straight, single- carriageway roads, such as much of the existing N3, were among the State's most dangerous. The NRA was, he said, seeking to replace the road with a motorway which was among the State's safest type of road, because of the separation of traffic.

Citing Garda statistics, Mr O'Neill said there were seven fatal collisions on the stretch in question, causing nine deaths. They included deaths at Ross in August 2004 and at Cooksland in January 2005. These were followed by deaths at Limekiln Hill in February 2005; at Clowanstown in August 2005; at Kilcarn where three pedestrians died in January of this year; at Philpotstown also in January of this year and again at Philpotstown last month.

In addition, he pointed out there had been a number collisions at Ross and Dunshaughlin throughout the period which had resulted in what the gardaí termed "serious injury".

The Save Tara Skryne Valley group and other campaigners have complained that the route of the motorway passes too close to the Hill of Tara, a national monument.

The existing national primary route, the N3 Dublin to Cavan road, is currently dual carriageway to the Clonee bypass on the Dublin/Meath border, and it then passes through the centre of Dunshaughlin to the Navan inner relief road and on through the centre of Kells.

The scheme to replace it as the principal route to the northwest provides for a toll motorway from the dual carriageway at Clonee to Carnaross north of Kells, a distance of about 60 kilometres.