NRA highlights high cost of M3 motorway

The National Roads Authority (NRA) has claimed that delays in building the M3 toll motorway in Meath are costing E1 million a week and have already come to around E70 million.

The body has claimed that nine people have been killed on an existing 10-kilometre stretch of the main road around the Hill of Tara in the last 21 months. The authority plans to replace this road as the main road in the region with the new motorway.

This, however, has brought it into opposition with archaeologists and conservationists wanting to maintain the Hill of Tara setting. Vincent Salafia of the Save Tara Skryne Valley campaign announced a Supreme Court challenge to the motorway route. Although he has lost his High Court case, he said he will take it to the European Court if necessary.
NRA spokesman Sean O’Neill said it was significant that the 10-kilometre stretch of road northwards from Dunshaughlin had been the scene of nine deaths in the last 21 months. He said the NRA was trying to replace the road with a motorway which was among Ireland’s safest type of road.

The Save Tara Skyrne Valley group and other campaigners have complained that the route which the motorway will take is too close to the Hill of Tara. The N3 Dublin to Cavan road is the dual carriageway to the Clonee bypass on the Dublin/Meath border.

Replacing it as the main route to the northwest provides for a toll motorway from the dual carriageway at Clonee to Carnaross, north of Kells.