This article is from page 2 of the 2007-09-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
CLARE and Limerick landowners along the new route containing the Shannon tunnel are sharing in a €/0 million bonanza.
The National Roads Author- ity (NRA) yesterday confirmed that €70 million has been spent on the compulsory purchase of lands along the route.
The money has been paid out to 49 landowners for an estimated 566 acres in an area that straddles Lim- erick and Clare on both sides of the River Shannon.
One of the biggest landowners along the route is Irish Cement Ltd.
The company operates a plant and quarry adjacent to the route and had 43 acres of land compulsorily ac- quired by Limerick County Council.
Part of the Irish Cement Ltd land- holding includes Bunlicky Lake Where a causeway has been con- structed as part of the road scheme.
Limerick County Council has turned down a Freedom of Informa- tion request seeking details on the individual amounts paid out as part of the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) process.
Work has been continuing on the project for the past year. An NRA spokesman said that the contractor “resembles a giant walking on his tip-toes” in dealing the various envi- ronmental challenges on the scheme.
As part of the works, the Direct Route consortium has had to indi- vidually translocate 2,500 plants from the construction site and place a large proportion of them in water tanks recreating the tidal conditions on the River Shannon. The dredg- ing of the River Shannon next year will also be dictated by the salmon spawning season.
General manager of Direct Route, Tom King said: “The plants – you have to translocate them and you can’t do anything until that is done and they occur in copious amounts all over the route.”
Mr King says that the tanks ensure that the plants gets water and nutri- ent at the same time as the Shannon (elon
‘The NRA and their consultants did a mammoth amount of work in prep- aration for the project. The number of combination and permutations of routes and strategies considered was amazing actually,” he added.