The Galway West Independent TD has held meetings with several senior government ministers to advocate for the Galway City Ring Road and the Claregalway Bypass to be included in detailed commitments when the new NDP is published.
The revised National Development Plan – which sets out government plans for key infrastructural projects over five years – is an overall investment of €112bn in housing, energy, water and transport projects from 2026 to 2030.
Details of which specific projects will be included are due to be published in the coming weeks, and Grealish, who is Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, says he is hopeful the two major Galway projects will be listed.
“These two projects, which are absolutely vital to the people of Galway in so many ways, are top of my agenda in government, and I have been putting the case for their advancement very strongly to my colleagues.
“The N6 Galway City Ring Road is currently with An Coimisiún Pleanála for approval and it is imperative that if and when it gets the final go-ahead, the funding to actually build it will be there waiting for it.
“We can’t have a delay of even one more day than necessary to get this vital piece of infrastructure started. Everyone in the country knows about Galway’s traffic problems and it’s affecting not only the people who are stuck in their cars for hours and their families, but it’s impeding investment and threatening jobs.
“The very future of Galway depends on this road,” warned Minister Grealish, who, as a ‘Super Junior’, attends meetings of the Cabinet.
“Similarly, the Claregalway Bypass is a project that I have been pushing for years, and I am hopeful we can finally get it off the ground,” he said.
“It was predicted that when the new motorway opened between Gort and Tuam, the daily traffic jams in and approaching Claregalway would finally come to an end.
“But the traffic figures from Transport Infrastructure Ireland show that there are still about 20,000 vehicles passing through every weekday – that’s only about 2,000 fewer than before the motorway opened in 2017. And meanwhile, the population of Claregalway is mushrooming.
“This proves beyond a shadow of doubt that there is [as much] a need for a bypass of the village today as there ever was, and that the traffic problems are only going to get worse as time goes on unless there is some relief,” Minister Grealish added.
Minister Grealish said he was “very hopeful” that funding allocations for both Galway roads projects will be detailed in spending commitments published in the National Development Plan by the end of the year.
