When the Monasterevin bypass opens today it will be the last stretch of the Dublin-Cork road to open for the next three years and the target of linking the two cities by motorway by 2008 will not now be reached.
Acknowledging that the Government's target for "substantial completion" of the route by 2008 would not now happen, the NRA said at the weekend that the next road opening on the M8 would be the Fermoy bypass in mid-2007. After that, all remaining sections would be finished by 2010 barring delays.
The Galway motorway will now also take until 2010 to complete, the NRA said.
However the Minister for Transport, Mr Cullen, has said he is not overly concerned that both routes will not make the 2008 deadline set by his predecessor, Mr Brennan. The Minister told The Irish Times yesterday that he was concerned an over-emphasis on completing motorways, one after the other, would slow down progress in inter-regional routes.
Signalling a change in direction of the programme, the Minister said inter-regional routes, such as the Galway to Limerick road, were "tremendously important" in terms of regional development. Our motorway programmes are like "jobs corridors" that help the regions to exploit their potential, he added.
The Minister also emphasised the importance of bypasses of towns and villages to relieve traffic congestion.
In Waterford, he said the proposed city bypass would make a tremendous difference to the business life of the city, and he was hopeful that construction work on this route would start early in the new year.
While the Ennis bypass in Co Clare was already under construction, he said the link to Galway should be a priority as it was identified by foreign direct investors in the west as being of crucial importance in their ability to access Shannon Airport.
Similarly he said the development of a western "arc" linking the west with Cork and the south-east was also a priority.
On the subject of tolls being used to finance additional road building schemes, Mr Cullen said he did not favour putting tolls on existing roads, as suggested by the NRA in the past. But he said recent experience had given him optimism that the NRA could deliver significant time savings on the building of the main routes and that the "map" of the remaining four - from Dublin to the cities of Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford - "will look very different in a few years time".
