The long running saga of the N26 linking Ballina to the N5 and beyond is set to run on for at least another year before a new preferred route for the road emerges. The item was up for discussion at the September meeting of the Ballina Electoral Area Committee this week where Tony McNulty, road design senior executive engineer with Mayo County Council, answered a number of questions from the elected councillors in the area.
“The earliest that we can start looking at route options again is November, and the earliest that we can have them identified will be at least April next year and it will be at least this time next year before they will be ready to be put before the council,” Mr McNulty told the members. “We have 49 different agencies to deal with in the process.”
The members were also told that because of the An Bord Pleanála decision to not grant the compulsory purchase order on lands for the original proposed route in February the decision had ramifications for the proposed N5 upgrade. Now the new N26 proposal will also have to include a section of the N5, because the N26 has to link up with the N5 and also allow the road to link in with the N17, which is part of the Derry to Cork road.
A number of the councillors voiced their dissatisfaction with the process. “We should be concentrating on the area around Foxford because that is where the problem is,” Cllr Seamus Weir told the meeting. “But we’ll probably agree a route and then they [An Bord Pleanála] will come back at us with something else about swans or something. It’s a shame because the longer this goes on the less chance we have of seeing something get done.”
Independent Cllr Gerry Ginty told the meeting: “From what I can see the strategy is only there to make the N5 project a better proposal, it’s just directing traffic and business to Castlebar that used to come into Ballina. If we have to link into the N17 would it not be better to bypass Foxford on the opposite side.”
Mr McNulty moved to dismiss the idea that it was only because of swans and wildlife that the original route was turned down. “The swans were not the reason it was turned down,” he said. “There were four reasons, one of them was that the board said that the design was overly ambitions, there was concern over the Moy Valley and we can’t ignore that as it’s a designated area. There was also concern over the traffic volume that the road will have, but over the last three years the traffic volume has only reduced by between three and six per cent in Mayo which is far less than in most other parts of the country.”
He added that the councillors had just received the results of a traffic management study which they were requested to complete and they had started to analyse the results of it. McNulty also told the meeting that the council had to prepare a business case study to show the need for the road, which they were doing. He moved to dispel fears that the NRA was not behind the project, telling the elected members. “We want the best for Mayo,” he said. “The NRA will support us as long as we meet their standards, if there was any pushing for a two plus two carriageway it came from us. It was not turned down for permission by the NRA, it was another agency, they have fully supported us in this project.”
