The controversial Galway City Ring Road will not cost €650 million as originally estimated, but is more likely to cost €1 billion by the time it is eventually built.
This is the view of the Independent Galway West TD, Noel Grealish [pictured below], who was speaking in the Dáil this week. In response, the Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan, agreed that the final cost was likely to be “much higher” than anything speculated to date.
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A decision on the future of the project is due from An Bord Pleanála at the end of June. Originally, ABP was to have made a decision by the end of April.
The costs associated with the various permutations of a bypass/ring road for Galway have risen from £103.8 million (about €130 million ), when the first plan was published in 1999 to €650 million for the current plan today.
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However, with no road having been built, it ring road has already cost €35 million had already been spent on this project since 1999 - €14.7 million on the initial Galway City Outer Bypass — which was abandoned after a European Court of Justice ruling in 2013 — and approximately €20 million on the current project.
“I firmly believe,” said Dep Grealish, “that the cost of this project, if it gets the go-ahead, will be in excess of €1 billion euro.”
