The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, took the first step towards removing one of the State's worst bottlenecks when he turned the sod on the €17 million Loughrea bypass in Co Galway yesterday.
The Minister said during the sod-turning ceremony that the 3.75 kilometre bypass would spare the Galway town up to 10,000 vehicles a day.
The project is expected to be finished by late next year, and will serve as a link to the proposed new N6 between Dublin and Galway, which may be financed under a public-private partnership initiative.
The Loughrea bypass was the subject of controversy earlier this year.
It was dubbed by a Fianna Fáil councillor as the "most talked about road in the country" when it emerged that Fianna Fáil councillors, supported by one Independent colleague, passed a rezoning decision in February which increased the project's costs.
The National Roads Authority (NRA) suspended the development on foot of the rezoning vote, and councillors were then forced to rescind their decision at a subsequent meeting.
The vote to rezone an eight-acre strip of land on the bypass route from agricultural to industrial was estimated to have pushed the overall cost of the project up by €5 million, from €19 million to €24 million.
