No ministerial role in Galway bypass route selection, says department

The Department of Transport has denied that the Minister for Transport must recommend a selected Galway bypass to Europe before the route application can be submitted to An Bord Pleanála.

The department was responding to a claim by Independent Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames that the Minister must “sign off” on the route, before An Bord Pleanála can consider it.

She said she had been given this information by the National Roads Authority (NRA) and that it was "contradictory " to what she had been told by Minister for Transport Paschal Donohoe.

Sympathy

“He [Mr Donohoe] said that all he could do was offer ‘sympathy’ as it was the ‘council’s decision’,” Ms Healy Eames said.

Mr Donohoe's department said the application to An Bord Pleanála was a matter for Galway County Council and the NRA but both would seek to confirm that the bypass was a "roads priority" for the department and "consistent with national policy".

“The department will clarify its policy and priorities in the context of the capital plan for 2016 to 2020,” it said, and neither the department nor the Minister would determine what was proposed and submitted to An Bord Pleanála, and would not determine the outcome.

Ms Healy Eames said that more than 43 homes and communities in Castlegar, the Headford Road, Bushypark, Dangan and Barna would be “decimated by the current selected route”.

She said the selected route was too close to the city,

“Galway county and city councils must change their tack and get serious about public transport now,”she said, and should provide “a school bus transport system for the city, a dedicated daily bus route crossing the Quincentennial Bridge” and serious exploration of a light rail system for Galway.