A National Roads Authority spokesman has confirmed that the long-awaited inner relief road through Sligo is one of the projects that will have to be "revisited". This is due to the scale of the board's financial commitments this year.
Work was due to start on the €20 million road this year, but there is now a doubt over whether the NRA will approve money for the project in this year's allocations. The NRA spokesman said "the first call" on funds would be the 20 major schemes already underway around the State.
"The Sligo inner relief road is one of a number of projects that the board will have to revisit in relation to intended timescales. I am not saying it won't go ahead, but the board will have to look at it." There were no specific completion dates laid down in the plan, he said.
Any delay in the Sligo project would prove highly contentious, as the town has been waiting for some solution to its chronic traffic congestion for many years. Houses along the route between the town centre and the railway and bus stations have already been demolished.
The planned road proved controversial, as many residents argued that a bypass should be built instead. A Bord Pleanála oral hearing eventually cleared the way for it to go ahead despite a majority of the members of Sligo Corporation being opposed to it.
Sligo-Leitrim Fine Gael TD Mr Gerry Reynolds has called on the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, to intervene with the NRA to ensure funding is provided this year. He said he had received information that it would not get funding.
Mr Reynolds said it did not make sense to delay the project given that Sligo was supposed to be a growth centre in the Government's spatial strategy. A meeting of the board of the NRA, which was due to be held on Tuesday was deferred pending the appointment of a new chairman and a number of new board members.
The spokesman said that given the significance of the allocations it was felt that the meeting should not be held with just eight members. He expected new appointments "in the very near future" and the allocations meeting would then be held within weeks.