Newry - Dundalk £86m Dual Carriagewqay Opens

armagh | environment | news report Friday August 03, 2007 19:23 by Sean Crudden - Cooley Environmental and Health Group sean.crudden at iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

Bigger, Faster, Safer. Progress in the Right Direction?

In an unscripted but public remark Conor Murphy said that these are "exciting" times for infrastructural development in Ireland. Presumably he did not mean someone being dragged from the top of a digger at the Tara site in Co Meath?

The first Major Inter-Urban (MIU) route between Dublin and Belfast was officially opened yesterday, 2 August 2007, by Dermot Ahern TD, Minister for Foreign Affairs; and Conor Murphy MP MLA, Minister for Regional Development; at 11.00 a.m.

The €154m dual carriageway connects the A1 at Cloghogue, Co Armagh, to the N1 at Dundalk. 4.6km of the roadway is north of the border and 9.4km south of the border.

The entire Dublin to the Border MIU has the maximum permitted speed limit of 120kph.

Excavations uncovered one archaeological find after another from Dundalk to Dromad, representing periods from the 4th millennium BC until around 1000 AD. The two main periods were Neolithic and Early Medieval. The Neolithic showed extensive settlement through four rectangular buildings and a Long Cairn (also known as a court tomb). The early medieval revealed souterrains and a massive muti-vallate enclosure containing over 870 human burials.

The Irish and British Governments funded this project with part funding by the European Union from the Trans-European Transport Networks Budget. A design and build scheme, the project was managed by Louth County Council, The Department of Regional Development for Northern Ireland Road Service and The National Roads Authority (NRA). Mouchel Parkman were the consulting engineers and Northroute JV, a consortium between SIAC (Ireland) and Ferrovial (Spain), was the contractor.

The cost of the northern stretch is reported to be £33m. From the information I have to hand there is no indication of what the cost of the southern section is but, I suppose, it is probably pro rata. Of the three funders mentioned in the first sentence of the last paragraph I cannot say who paid what?