M17/M18 Gort to Tuam PPP Road Scheme

I posted a more detailed comment on this on another site, but basically the nub of my point is that this will kill off the Western Rail Corridor!

If it isn’t dying already thanks to Iarnrod Eireanns dreadful “service”!!

Seems strange that when other more benificial schemes, such as Limerick-Cork and the Dublin Rosslare Euroroute are being shelved this is being progressed!

C

As an aside, when the WRC dies the usual suspects will start screaming that Ireland is too small for rail to be economic. Nobody will pay any attention to the crappy frequencies and the millions spent on motorways to keep potential customers in cars!

Nothing to do with rail; this is about buying votes for the upcoming election. A motorway to a town with a population of 3,000 people.

What more do you need to say?

Election now please……

@PVC King wrote:

A motorway to a town with a population of 3,000 people.

It’s a key part of the “Atlantic Corridor”, bypassing some of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the country, linking with the M6 at Athenry and cutting travel time from Limerick to Sligo / Donegal / Derry by at least 40 minutes. Don’t try to spin this as a motorway to Tuam.

The only other scheme on the cards that would be of greater benefit regionally or nationally would be the Galway Outer Bypass with the M20 Limerick to Cork about level with the M17/18 in terms of priority. What is being created is a motorway network – like it or not the M17/18 is an important part of it.

It’s going to be a nightmare for the N20/N21 as all these new motorways are been built or nearing completion while these two major arteries that link the western corridor left idle. It’s good to see the M17 going ahead in January finally.

Adare needs to be bypassed soon. It won’t be able to cope with the traffic once the feeder roads are completed.

I think you might be able to build the biggest baddest XXX in the world for that…

@dave123 wrote:

Adare needs to be bypassed soon. It won’t be able to cope with the traffic once the feeder roads are completed.

I rest my case on commuter led sprawl; I can see the merit in linking Ennis with Galway; but Tuam is a town of 3,000 people and unless Galway corrects its planning model it will be a motorway to Headford then Cong. You can give grand titles such as Atlantic Corridors but only jobs will put vitality back into the North West; beyond retail distribution there is little non-local traffic between Galway and Donegal as there is such a dispersed population; whether a truck takes 30 or 32 hours to reach Frankfurt or Milan plays no part in the investment decision.

A few more decisions like this and one senses the next government will have their own Papandreou moment when they see the books of the Dept of Finance

The Government is providing funding for new motorway and that’s great for the west.
300,000,000 euros will be spent in building this 57km of roadway.

The Irish construction industry is near complete collapse and the number of unemployed in Ireland is climbing towards 0.5 million.

It has been decided, by a person/people, with a secure and extremely highly-paid job with an Irish statutory body, comprised mainly of what appears to be Irish nationals under the authority of an Irish Minister and elected politician, to hand over this 300million euro to a non-Irish International consortium to do with as they please, as long as the road gets built.

http://www.nra.ie/AboutUs/OrganisationalStructure/file,2318,en.jpg

There’ll be a few local lads employed, I presume, to shovel the gravel and shuffle the traffic cones.

I’m struggling to comprehend this situation.

Somebody please tell me that this huge funding, destined for London and Utrecht, is not from the Irish taxpayer, but from some EU transport or cohesion fund.

All public works contracts in the EU of this size are put to European tender as required by EU directive 2004/18/EC enacted by the European Parliament in which we have a vote.

Our economy is dependent on exports. If our trading partners took the mercantilist attitude that you’re proposing we would be back in the 1950s in no time.

It is a fair question to ask why after 15 years of building boom we haven’t produced a building company capable of winning this contract.

@Frank Taylor wrote:

All public works contracts in the EU of this size are put to European tender as required by EU directive 2004/18/EC enacted by the European Parliament in which we have a vote.

Our economy is dependent on exports. If our trading partners took the mercantilist attitude that you’re proposing we would be back in the 1950s in no time.

It is a fair question to ask why after 15 years of building boom we haven’t produced a building company capable of winning this contract.

As I said, I’m struggling to understand the reasons behind the decision.
I’m aware of EU competition law. I don’t pretend to know the details of Public-Private Partnership tender selection procedures, but I know that there is a national social, economic and political context in which a decision is made and that this context is an utterly irrelevant detail before the God of Competition Law.

If questioned, the decision-makers in the public bodies, in their own context of heavily insulated comfortable state-sponsored employment, will say “tough” and point to the legislation, like you’ve just done. It’s so easy isn’t it?

If it is the case that Irish building companies are incapable of being competitive in their own country in this economic climate, then they have no future.

100,000 have jumped ship in the last 18 months. It’s already the 50’s revisited.

Anyway enough complaining. You’re probably right. Competition Law is God and the best team won. End of story.

Frank is right on competition law; Tayto is right on the real concern of the inability of a domestic contractor to win this on a competitive basis and the issues that throws up for the future of this heavily labour intensive sector.

But how can the government have in any sense of sanity approved a motorway to Tuam in this fiscal climate?

What this says is concentrate on the International sector with particular reference to indigenous firms who can leverage niche bubbles therein.

@Tayto wrote:

September 2010, Ireland, a 300 million euro Co. Galway road construction project is awarded to an Anglo-Dutch consortium by an Irish statutory body, the NRA.
There you go.

Succinctly put 🙂

@hutton wrote:

Succinctly put 🙂

A metro sexual fallout?

@missarchi wrote:

A metro sexual fallout?

You’re smoking too much weed.