LANDOWNERS ALONG the route of the €810 million Shannon tunnel scheme received a total of €56.5 million from selling land along the route to the State, new figures show.
Figures released by Limerick County Council in response to a Freedom of Information request yesterday show one landowner along the route received €10.4 million from the State as part of the scheme’s compulsory purchase order (CPO).
The tunnel is due to open at the end of this month or in early August, and is expected to end the daily gridlock in Limerick city and remove 40,000 vehicles from the city’s arteries, linking all the main routes – Dublin, Cork, Kerry, Ennis/Shannon – which converge on Limerick. The route will be the first tolled road in the midwest and will cost motorists with private cars €1.80 to use.
The figures show the State compulsorily purchased 442 acres from 54 landowners for €56.5 million along the 9.75km Limerick Southern Ring Road Phase II scheme.
This compares to the State purchasing 355 acres from 85 landowners for €16.9 million for the 9.5km Limerick Southern Ring Road Phase I scheme, which was opened in May 2004.
The payout for the tunnel scheme averages out at €1.1 million to each landowner and €127,000 per acre, compared to an average payout of €19,882 per landowner and €47,605 per acre for the earlier phase.
Landowners along the tunnel scheme route benefited more from land values in the city, whereas in the case of phase one much of the area involved was farmland.
The NRA has confirmed that the cost of land for the tunnel scheme was very high, and yesterday an NRA spokesman said negotiations relating to the CPO of lands for the scheme had coincided with the peak in land values.
Negotiations for the purchase of the lands took place in the years after the CPO was formally confirmed in August 2004. Already, Limerick County Council had twice refused access under the FOI Act to individual amounts paid to landowners.
The most recent refusal before yesterday’s decision was in July 2009, when the local authority stated the purchase of land was still the subject of ongoing negotiations, and the release of the information could disclose negotiating positions taken by the council.
After the landowner who received €10.4 million, the figures show the next in line were landowners who secured €8 million, €6.6 million and €5 million respectively.
The figures show that a fifth landowner received €4.8 million, with a sixth receiving €4 million.
A further five landowners received sums between €2.9 million and €1.1 million.
The figures show that in relation to the first phase, the highest amount a landowner secured was €1.7 million.
The tunnel scheme is currently the largest ever public road capital project in the midwest and is being constructed on the basis of a Public Private Partnership (PPP), with Direct Route securing the contract. The route’s toll scheme anticipates that the operator of the route will generate €456 million from tolls over a 30-year period, though this figure is likely to be revised upwards due to inflation.
The “immersed tube tunnel” construction approach to building the facility is the same method used to construct the Jack Lynch tunnel in Cork.
