Laois County Council this week passed a controversial motion to vary its 2000 county development plan. This will accommodate the National Roads Authority plans (NRA) to develop or extend three national primary roads through the county.
These are the N8 Dublin-Cork route; the N7 Dublin-Limerick route and the N9 Dublin-Waterford route. Although the routes are still aspirational, a local opposition group believes it has uncovered documents which identify the preferred routes and earmark an environmentally sensitive location near Portlaoise for a "massive" motorway interchange.
Laois is one of a number of councils which have been forced to amend their development plans in line with national Government policy, following the announcement by the NRA last year that it intends to advance the N7 and N8 routes through Public Private Partnership (PPP) schemes.
According to Ms Joan Finlay of the Four Rivers Heritage Trust, a limited company set up to make representations on the matter, the "preferred route" for the N7 and N8 includes an interchange which runs close to the ancient Aghaboe monastic settlement, and also to a Special Area of Protection. This proposal was contained in the minutes of a meeting with consulting engineers Arup in August last year.
The trust also opposes tolling of any new road through the county as it believes it will have a profound impact on local communities.
However, Ms Finlay said the group did not oppose outright the motion to vary the development plan. It had suggested amendments to the motion, which would have been a satisfactory compromise in the view of many local residents.
Suggested amendments, which were not accepted by the council, were that the council would recognise the possibility that major road schemes could have a "severe negative impact" on local communities and families and that it would not proceed without carefully examining such concerns.
Those who made submissions, following the required advertising of the proposed variation to the plan, also suggested that no road measure should interfere with or impact on any designated heritage site or Special Area of Protection. The council was also asked to make the community life of rural parts of the county an "essential consideration" and to ensure that rural communities would not be "severed".
The Four Rivers group was also opposed to the tolling of any proposed road through the county, though no decision has been made officially on tolling.
At a special meeting early in July, the council agreed to amend the initial wording of the variation to the development plan (which had already been placed in newspapers) to delete the reference to the N9 route.
However, councillors were told prior to their monthly meeting last Monday that they were not entitled to vary the wording already approved. A spokesman for Laois County Council said the advice of counsel was that councillors could not "cherry pick" the routes they chose to include in the variation. It was not possible for The Irish Times to see that legal advice, he said.
The spokesman said no definite decision had been made by the NRA on the routes. Such decisions would, however, have to be in line with proper planning and sustainable development for the area, and in line with Government policy.