N17 - Knock to Collooney [design & planning underway]

To somewhat quote a Kerry TD:

"To legislate nationally, you must first get elected locally".

Now join the dots = all politics are local.

For a minister to fail to deliver in his/her constitutancy, reelection might prove difficult.

Wait for election season is my guess. Everything will get rolled out again.

I'm looking forward to the third or fourth turning of the sod at the cork events centre, personally.

None of those would be worthwhile on a toll basis, and currently the state can borrow for less than the private sector - so a PPP that the state has to fund entirely (no tolls) would be throwing money away

Its embarrassing the dearth of substantial infrastructure projects completed in a period of relative prosperity for the country.

The Government crowing about setting up a Sovereign Wealth Fund while at the same time we can't get an M20 or a airport metro built. Not that they should be mutually exclusive but the parish politics, ABP situation and general humming and hawing is depressing.

I suspect that the Northwest gets more road spending per capita (because of the low population) than the south of the country, but the difference is not enough to compensate for the much larger national road network per capita.

To show what I mean, compare Cork with Mayo. About 520 km of the National road network lies within Cork city and county, while Mayo contains 390 km of the National road network. Cork has more roads, but not that much, really.

But here's the big difference: the population of County Cork is about 580,000 people; Mayo, on the other hand has 140,000 residents (2022 figures for both). So, while County Mayo's national road network is 80% of the length of Cork's, its population is barely 25% of Cork's.

If funding were on the basis of population alone, the Northwest would be much worse off compared to the more populated South and East, but the National road network has big clue in its name, and (usually!) the spending is based on the needs of the network as a whole, and there are nationally-important reasons to invest in roads that don't really serve very many people, but provide essential connections between regions. Whether a road is part of the national network or not has very little to do with catchment, or average traffic - it's about which route provides the best link to the rest of the country.

Absolutely right. Which is why a comparison is really difficult and probably unhelpful. Comparing area, population, roads km, nothing works well. Comparing South with Dublin region isn't easy either.

Think the current roads architecture in the Northwest makes little sense for the modern era and there's a splatter of parallel "National" routes in a kind of "something for everyone" kind of way. If there was consolidation of the National routes in Mayo particularly and de-rating of some of the others I think it would work out for the better. But right now it's loads of low-AADT low-quality "national" roads.

Anyway back to my original point, which was that the number of projects in limbo in the North West is very much the same story as down here in the South. It's mostly just a story of too little moving anywhere unfortunately. I don't think it's a localised phenomenon at all unfortunately.

It's almost like I should have thought to write something like: "a comparison is really difficult and probably unhelpful. Comparing area, population, roads km, nothing works well."

You're trying all sorts of comparisons (Wexford V Donegal, Waterford V Mayo, Sligo growth rate) but there's nothing that really works. It can suffice to say instead that there's a big chunk of the country that's not fulfilling its potential or pulling its weight economically because of a lack of core infrastructure. And you can then tag large parts of the country that this statement applies to.

Look I travel in the Northwest quite a lot. I am not saying that the infrastructure there is good. I don't think I ever insinuated that we shouldn't invest in the Northwest.

What I am saying - repeatedly - that it isn't a case of "the North West currently being ignored compared with everywhere else". Infrastructure investment basically stalled. Projects are stalled all over the country. That's what I've said about five times now but for some reason people keep coming back with "but what about the Northwest". Yes also in the Northwest. The areas that got their completed infrastructure in the boom times are way ahead of those areas that didn't. N20, N22, N25, N75, the list goes on and on.

We can keep making comparisons between the Northwest and the South (Southeast in this case?) but there's honestly no good comparison. To refute your comparisons specifically, in terms of economic output the Northwest was historically of low quality land and low investment with resulting low economic output, the quality of roads infrastructure didn't cause that it merely carries on with a bad practice. And comparing Donegal with Wexford is not reasonable: there's about 5 reasons why that comparison doesn't work. Try comparing Donegal with West Cork instead maybe, as these two areas are more comparable. Waterford is a great point you made: I think Waterford does have unusually good infrastructure, and I believe this was possibly down to ministerial interference during the boom times. It was possibly lucky too that many of its major towns were on routes to other major destinations. But now try comparing Waterford with Cork and see how it goes! Waterford is an aberration. Sligo was missing an awful lot of things to hinder its growth but even taking that as an example, it's currently roughly the same size as Tralee, and in 1971 it was roughly the same size as...Tralee. I'd see massive similarities between both towns actually.

So again, I travel and work in the Northwest a lot, and I'll often hear things like "we're ignored here". Believe me, you'll hear exactly the same comments down the Southwest and in the South. And guess what: you'll even get those comments in parts of Dublin. So it's not a localisation thing, that's what I keep saying over and over again.

Comparing regions in my view is perfectly reasonable. Comparing towns in different regions is not very useful based on scale. The state of a region affects so many people. A town mainly affects people in its hinterland.

The EU judges the fortunes of citizens on a regional basis too. In recent years the Northwestern region has actually regressed from 'Developed region' to 'Region in transition'. So saying thats its just a case that projects are stalled everywhere simply isnt true and doesn't explain what's happening.

The only way to address this is with positive discrimination in spending on a regressed region. Projects like the N17 affect the entire region and therefore should have greater priority. Even if a town in Cork or Kerry is not doing any better than one in a disadvantaged region its still has advantages of being in a more prosperous region and it has more opportunity to progress.

https://www.nwra.ie/news/region-in-transition-the-way-forward/

Tralee V Sligo population over 50 years, I'm not sure what data you're using, but Google seems to show they're similar sized towns both now and in 1971. Tralee is obviously growing at a higher rate than Sligo overall but considering the town boundary changes I don't consider there to be an enormous difference. In fact, if you go back 20 years instead of 50, Sligo would appear to have a much higher rate of growth. Again, the two towns look to be very similar, I'm happy to be proven wrong though because (as I keep saying) direct comparisons are always problematic.

1971: Tralee 13,263 Sligo 14,100, a difference of approx. 900 people

2022: Tralee 20,288 Sligo 19,402, a difference of approx. 900 people

Donegal and Wexford are extremely different. Donegal has a thin sliver of connectivity to the republic. Donegal has an extensive border with another jurisdiction. Donegal is not a transit point for any other city's shipping. Donegal is not a transit point for another country's shipping. Donegal's lax planning and development patterns are well known. There's an awful lot of reasons Wexford got infrastructure ahead of Donegal.

Why compare with West Cork? Because both areas are lacking in industry. Both have high volumes of "wilderness" type tourism. Both have poor settlement patterns. Both have poor agricultural land. Both have no major towns or cities nearby. Both are largely coastal communities. Both have reasonably poor infrastructure. There are similarities between both. I wouldn't say West Cork is anything like Wexford. Nor would I say Donegal is very like Wexford.

Agreed, there is one town in Donegal which is bigger than Bandon. But talking about being "part of a county with a large city with a motorway to Dublin and in international airport" makes little sense. A lot of towns in West Cork are 1.5-2 hours from Cork. To give you a comparison, that's pretty much how far Killybegs is from Derry airport. Places like Schull are 2 hours from the nearest motorway too. You're talking about very remote small fishing towns basically.

The problem which Donegal has, which you absolutely put your finger on, is that it's isolated from its natural urban area by a political border. It's international politics that are the biggest issue. Wexford isn't a good comparison. Let's be realistic. You basically came around and made that argument yourself by the looks of it?

I fully accept your point about the North-West being poor performing (maybe poorest performing?), I have zero issues with that. I'm just also saying that it has historically been a poor performing area. I'm not fully convinced 2006, at the height of the celtic tiger and the funny money of that era is a good reference point to how far it's fallen. But feel free to prove me wrong on that.

This is all 100% totally off-topic of course, and I'm just going to say the same thing again to you once more because I really feel like this is a complete waste of time....

There's a lot of projects stalled in the North West. There's a lot of projects stalled everywhere. It might look like a conspiracy, but it's not a conspiracy.

Note to self: don't ever point out the severe lack of progress on infrastructure projects countrywide to people in the North West again...