After a mammoth process, beset with delay, error, legal challenges, oral hearings, environmental concern, remittance, competing analyses, pandemic, demolition of families’ homes, fundamental questions of public policy, falcons, horses, bats, butterflies, and whatever-your-having-yourself, in April, the 18km route from Coolagh to the R336 Coast Road was finally granted planning permission.
The Galway Races, Brooks Timber - a building supplies company, and conservation group Friends of the Irish Environment mounted the most serious legal challenges to specific aspects of the road before the latest approval.
Originally estimated to cost £104m (c€130m ) in 1999, the new road has been allocated over €1 billion in the current National Development Plan. This is for 6km of single and 12km of dual carriageway; an eight-span, 620m River Corrib bridge linking Dangan with Menlo; a 320m viaduct carrying the road from Menlo to Lackagh; two tunnels – each over 200m long - in Lackagh and Ballybrit; link roads, side roads, embankments and interchanges.
At least €45 million has been spent on the project already: nearly €15m on the Galway City Outer Bypass cancelled by a European court in 2013; a Dáil question confirmed a further €20 million was sunk into the current N6 Galway City Ring Road by 2021; Department of Transport figures indicate more than €10 million spent since 2021. That’s 134 Leinster House bike sheds.
Within weeks of the planning grant, the High Court was petitioned to consider four applications for judicial review of An Coimisiún Pleanála’s decision. These proceedings were initiated by three home owners impacted by the new road, and an active travel advocate. Hearings are scheduled for November, and there are rumblings that other individuals or organisations may request to be attached to these proceedings.
Last week, the Galway ring road was confirmed by cabinet to be designated a critical infrastructure project under Minister Jack Chambers’ new Critical Infrastructure Act, passed in June. This is designed to speed-up the delivery of certain projects considered ‘critical’. Galway’s ring road is in the first ever tranche of such designations, and there are calls to include University Hospital Galway’s redevelopment too.
But what also happened within this timeframe is a supreme court case last February very few people outside environmental policy circles have ever heard of: Coolglass Wind Farm Limited v An Coimisiún Pleanála. In a nutshell, this ruling about a wind farm in County Laois confirmed that every public body must abide by various climate action plans as a strict, legal requirement, not as looser policy aspirations.
The Critical Infrastructure Act 2026, drawn up as a bill just weeks after the Coolglass decision, basically cancels the supreme court judges’ 94-page Coolglass ruling – ‘critical infrastructure’ energy, transport and utility projects are now not subject to Section 15 of the 2015 Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, which mandates long-term climate plans, strategies and frameworks.
Trumpian politics
This followed Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan’s decision, in May, to slash fees paid to lawyers involved in environmental law cases. This “highly Trumpian move” according to heritage body An Taisce, means even if a litigant proves a public body has broken the law, they may be landed with crushing court costs, thereby introducing a chilling effect to citizens’ rights to take government officials to court.
So does this mean we will get a ringroad, first mooted 27 years ago, any quicker because one law which protects our environment no longer applies to it?
Yes, it will, if potential environmental litigation is unlawful to pursue in the courts because ministers have deemed this project beyond accountability, yet it is unclear if the new legislation has retrospective elements, and existing judicial reviews should proceed regardless. No, not really, however, is the short answer.
Public bodies charged with delivering the ring road still have the same resource constraints, no matter if they are told to “fast track”.
This new road project designated ‘critical infrastructure’ will still be implemented by public and civil servants in Galway City Council, Galway County Council, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, National Transport Authority, Department of Transport, Road Management Office, Bord na Mona, ESB Networks, Uisce Éireann, Enet, Bord Gáis and Department of Public Expenditure, all integrated by consultants from Arup, basing themselves next to a National Roads Project Office in Ballybane, where scores of private contractors will be coordinated. Sure what could possibly go wrong?
As road construction commences, will demolitions, enabling works, and subsidiary projects, including realignments to existing roads or junction upgrades not covered by the N6 planning grant, be also deemed ‘critical’? What if unforeseen archaeological, geological or hydrological discoveries warrant a substantial change of design outside the current planning grant – will that too be deemed ‘critical’?
And how will public bodies manage this transition between designated and non-designated functions of their statutory roles, when the Coolglass ruling states they absolutely must do so when it comes to environmental law? Nevermind all the other laws...
How might individuals feel about the scope of ‘critical infrastructure’ designations, especially when tangible impacts emerge in various neighbourhoods – especially west of the Corrib – of increased construction traffic, as enormous motorway embankments are constructed, slicing through historic parishes. ‘Environment’ may be a loose term, until you see the environment you have known since birth, change radically, and irrevocably.
European angle
The new Act gives the Minister power to create fast-track channels where projects go to the top of the queue for assessment by decision makers, but this opens up political quandaries on which, other pre-existing projects should therefore be delayed? Local TDs will get it in the ear regardless, one presumes.
The Galway Ringroad is part of the EU’s TEN-T Comprehensive Network of inter-continental routes, and is subject to European laws and directives which the 2026 Critical Infrastructure Act does not modify. This means the ring road is open to litigation in Ireland and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU ). Will we see litigants bearing maroon and white flags some day, protesting outside the courts complex in Luxembourg?
The government is desperate to move the saga of the Galway ring road to a conclusion, as politicians are consistently telling us that the solution to Galway city’s congestion – replacing vehicle traffic with vastly improved public transport – relies on a ring road being built first.
All being equal, building should begin in 2028. Construction industry financiers are already salivating over the prospect of the ring road opening up more land for residential development, especially if water infrastructure is also improved.
It would be an utter irony if the ring road’s prominence as one of the test cases for designation as ‘critical infrastructure’ results in even more red tape and legal delay. All that is certain, is that as time marches by, price will invariably float higher, until planning concerns wane, and cost-benefit realities figure.
