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At a public meeting in Clara Hall, Co. Kilkenny on Thursday night July 19th 2001 Mr. Michael Egan of the National Roads Authority made
the astonishing admission that the NRA did not advise the Cabinet Committee on
Infrastructural Development to build motorways.
Why is this astonishing? Because if you read the National Development Plan page 61 you will see that it was the Cabinet Committee on
Infrastructural Development that recommended to the government to build motorways. And since the National Roads Authority is the
body set up by legislation - the Roads Act 1993 - to "secure the provision of a safe and efficient network of national roads", it is
reasonable to assume that the NRA would be the body to advise the government on what roads to build. But now we are told that it was
not the NRA that advised the building of motorways but Forfas.
Who is Forfas? Another group set up by government
but largely independent of government! Is it qualified to determine
that motorways are needed? The first piece of information we need to
answer this question is the traffic analysis data that Forfas used
to justify its recommendation. But such data is nowhere in sight.
The NRA's own 20 year traffic projections do not justify the motorway network that is being proposed throughout most of the country. In many cases the
existing National Primary road and the new motorway combined will be up to
80 percent EMPTY in 20
years time. (figures from the National Road Needs Study). So where did the figures that justify a motorway network come from?
Dear Taoiseach, as chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructural Development, the group that decided within the past two years to build this motorway
network, please tell us where you got the figures to justify your
decision and publish a copy of same.
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