N17 - Knock to Collooney [design & planning underway]

Well yes, that's where we are with the N20 as I see it. It was bundled up as "one big job" and effectively put on the "never" list because it was too big. It's very frustrating

1. It may have been delivered during the recession but the project you are referring to was designed and advanced during the Tiger years (motorway north of the M6 was boom time vanity project). It was also a PPP which allowed for it to be delivered as a single project, it almost certainly would have reduced were it being funded by the Exchequer.
2. The smaller scale likely helped that project as it was possible to deliver all within a reasonable period of time. There is the possibility that planning permission could expire before all the N17 is built. All they had to do was confirm the Preferred Route, then bring sections through planning and straight to construction. Bringing it all through full design only means that nothing will happen for several years.

No problem with doing it in chunks as long as there is some kind of commitment to do that and not allow the planning approval to lapse. But with Eamon Ryan at the wheel, there is no guarantee even that would happen. His comments seem to suggest its on the never never as long as he's around.

What would be most annoying would be that planning is approved, one section gets built and the rest is prolonged to the point that planning expires and the whole project restarts again in the future, wasting money all over again and keeping the local land owners in permanent limbo.

Well the current (seemingly strapped) project is most likely to result in some part(s) getting built and that planning expires on the rest. As it stands/stood, it is/was one big project with one Business Case. Turning that into multiple projects takes a lot of administration and time. Each section basically needs a new Business Case (because the benefits of any section are very different to the benefit of the whole lot in one go) which then has to get approval. There is also no guarantee that the budget allocation for the overall project will be split amongst smaller projects as they are essentially new projects with their own Business Case and the funding allocation could die with the overall project if its Business Case doesn't proceed through the gates.

So you have a longer planning process due to the scale of the project, followed by Business Case approval and construction possibly multiple times which runs down planning validity. Planning smaller sections could go through planning quicker (the first few could use the early stage work already done) and have Business Case updated as it proceeds (as is how the process is supposed to work).

Ryan is unlikely to be MfT in under the next government so most likely will have no influence on decisions relating to construction. It would be much easier for a future Minister to push forward smaller, lower cost projects than a project with an estimated cost of €600m.

I think people are massively overthinking the reasons why this isn't going ahead. There are two reasons:

1) It's a road;

2) It's a road serving a region where there are no Green TDs defending seats at the next election.

There's really nothing more to it than that. Talk of bypasses and unrealistic rail projects is just fluff to avoid saying that you're not getting this and you're not getting anything else either, as long as the Greens have a say in the matter.

The road was supposed to be designed, nothing was going to be built for many years.

Nobody expected it to be built immediately. It was to be designed with a view to being built. I’m sure you would concede that the reason for designing a road is with a view to building it rather than keep engineers busy while you think of a real job for them. I certainly never said anything about an immediate start in construction and it’s fairly disingenuous to suggest I did.

And now any move towards that has been suspended as far as we’re allowed to know.

No coincidence.

And before Ray McSharry I can only think of Ted Nealon. I think he was only a junior minister. And before that?

Can't recall any other ministers since the early 1970s.

Not having a go at you but this is an indictment of all that is wrong in this country with regard to planning and development.

It's the one thing I hear about ministers that drives me crazy that we have to have some sort of regional balance. Ministers are supposed to be working for the country as a whole so it shouldn't matter where they come from, it should matter that they are competent and qualified for their roles.

Really? Sinn Fein will be under pressure to deliver this road? They'll be relieved to learn that they won't have to worry about housing, the health service or even the WRC, which they are massive supporters of.

Sinn Fein Fianna Fail Nua have made so many promises that won't get delivered.

Yep this is what I'm always moaning about in the infrastructure forum: we're kinda back to discussing politics again and it's nobody here's fault. We just need to do more to decouple infrastructure planning and spending from the election cycle I think.

I'd be happy if the transport minister had almost no input into how TII/NTA spent on roads, other than the overall funding money available, and the broad policy concepts (yes to bypasses, yes to distributors, no bypass-distributors etc). I realise that this makes the NTA/TII officials extremely powerful but I think it's better than all the electioneering we have at the moment.