An Bord Pleanála has given permission for a 50-km, €680 million motorway scheme through an archaeologically important area near the Hill of Tara in Co Meath. Motorists will have to pay tolls on the new €680 million road running from Clonee to Kells in Co Meath.
The M3 Clonee to Kells motorway, which will bypass Dunshaughlin, Navan and Kells, is to be built as a tolled motorway using a public private partnership (PPP) to build, operate, and maintain it.
The scheme will eliminate a severe traffic bottleneck at Dunshaughlin as well as easing congestion in Navan and Kells. It is expected to take at least 30 minutes off the journey time between Dublin and Cavan.
However, critics of the road, members of the Meath Roads Action Group, have said the motorway runs too close to a number of heritage areas, including the Hill of Tara, considered to be one of the Republic's most important archaeological heritage sites.
Although Meath County Council and the National Roads Authority insist the motorway avoids the Hill of Tara, the action group maintains it is still too close and that the hill should be considered part of an archaeological complex which includes Skreen and Dunsany.
The roads group said the proposed motorway invades this complex and compared the proposed route to driving a motorway between the burial tombs at Newgrange and Knowth.
The motorway will link with the existing N3 dual carriageway near Clonee, at its southern end, and at Carnacross, north of Kells, at its northern end.
The proposed road is one of a second wave of PPPs announced by the Government in June 2000.
It follows proposals for toll roads between Dublin and Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford.
The M1 Dublin to the Border road opened as a tolled motorway earlier this year.
Toll charges for the Clonee to Kells motorway, estimated at August 2000 prices, were 45 cent for a motorbike, 87 cent for a car, rising to a maximum of €2.15 for articulated lorries.
However, there will be two toll plazas over 47 km of motorway.
The first will be located in the Clonee to Dunshaughlin section, at the Black Bull bridge.
The second will be located in the Navan to the north of Kells section at Grange, west of White's Quarry.
Motorists travelling the full length of motorway will be required to pay the toll twice.
The toll on a car over the full 47 km of motorway would be €1.74 at August 2000 prices.
In addition to the 47 km of motorway there will be about 3 km of dual carriageway, as well as 11 km of single carriageway.
The motorway is to be linked by 24 km of ancillary roads to the existing road network through junctions at Pace, Dunshaughlin, Blundelstown, Kilcarn, Athboy Road and Kells.
The National Roads Authority said yesterday it expected the proposed motorway to cost around €680 million.
In the case of the Kilcock to Kinnegad PPP motorway on the M4, the State's contribution, including land costs, was about 65 per cent of total costs.
On these figures the Clonee to Kells motorway would cost the State a sizeable €442 million, even allowing for the PPP involvement.
The concession to the private sector partner will be a 30-year licence to collect tolls on the route.
The National Roads Authority has advertised in the Official Journal of the European Communities inviting expressions of interest from suitable companies or consortiums interested in building the motorway.
It has received six responses so far from interested parties. The public inquiry into the road was completed last year.
Commenting on the archaeological issues, a spokesman for the National Roads Authority said that An Bord Pleanála had given seven pages of conditions along with its permission for the motorway.
These conditions related mostly to noise and the disturbance of flora and fauna, and would appear to suggest that the board had accepted the National Roads Authority's thinking that the road avoided significant archaeological remains.
"We are still studying the conditions, but on first reading there doesn't seem to be anything onerous about the archaeological element," the National Roads Authority spokesman said.
