A major revision of the timetable for the building of the motorways from Dublin to Cork and Galway will see both routes "substantially completed" by 2007, the Minister for Transport announced yesterday.
Speaking as he opened the € 160 million Kildare town bypass the Minister said the Government had decided that at least three motorways should be substantially completed by 2007 - just one year off the original target in the National Development Plan 2000-2006.
Mr Brennan said the prioritisation of the three routes over the next five years would not cause other road projects to be delayed. One of them, the Dublin to the Border route, is partially complete.
On the Cork route an additional €300 million is now available following the European Commission's decision last week to designate the scheme under its TENS (Trans European Networks) Programme, he said. Designation automatically brings with it funding of up to 20 percent of the cost, which he put at about € 1.5 billion.
The Dublin to Galway motorway is not as yet a TENS designated route but the Minister said he hoped it would be included within two years.
Whatever the outcome of those negotiations the Minister said he was determined that the Galway motorway, which required about € 1 billion of investment, should be included in roads to be substantially complete by 2007.
Mr Brennan said the Government's decision to guarantee more than € 7 billion, with another € 1 billion likely to come from private financing, had given the National Roads Authority (NRA) the necessary certainty over its allocation to allow it to move ahead with acquiring land and progressing schemes.
Mr Michael Egan, the NRA's corporate affairs spokesman, confirmed the authority would publish its full up-coming roads programme early in the new year. "Certainly in the first quarter we should be able to say with some certainty which schemes would be completed over the next five years as long as we continue to have certainty over the money".
Mr Brennan told the NRA he was confident that the era of cost overruns and delays was over but he warned that the Government was determined to get value for money in all future NRA schemes.
The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, who was also at the Kildare bypass opening, said the Monasterevin bypass was already about four months ahead of schedule. He said the next big project on the Cork road would be the Portlaoise to Cullahill and Cullahill to Cashel sections which should be complete in "about three years or sooner".
The Kildare bypass extends from the western end of the Curragh dual carriageway, which now officially becomes a motorway, to the eastern side of Monasterevin. The road is expected to take about 20,000 vehicles a day out of Kildare town. It is also expected to cut about 30 minutes off peak travel times between the capital and Cork.
Kildare County Council has approved a major motorway services station at Monasterevin.
A decade after it was first planned the road opening was welcomed by the Kildare county manager, Mr Niall Bradley, and the chairman of the NRA, Mr Peter Malone, who praised its environmental features which were designed to protect the Pollardstown aquifer.
Immediately after its opening yesterday afternoon traffic volumes in the town dropped noticeably and the usual northbound backlog of traffic south of Kildare town dissipated.
For motorists travelling in the other direction, however, it will be at least this time next year until the Monasterevin bypass eases the bottlenecks there.
