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
THE company that will operate the toll on the €810 million Shannon tunnel is expected to generate in ex- cess of €456 million from the route over a 35-year period.
However, the agreement struck be- tween the National Roads Authority (NRA) and the “Direct Route” con- sortium avoids a repeat of the mas- sive profits made by the operator of the toll on the M50 in Dublin.
Described by the National Roads Authority (NRA) as “the largest in- frastructural scheme in the west of Ireland that no one knows about’, work on the tunnel has been continu- ing for the past year. A large propor- tion of the work is taking place in Clare where the 67/5ft long tunnel is
being constructed in a dry basin on the north of the Shannon. It 1s due to open in 2010.
The road will link all national routes converging on Limerick from Dublin, Tipperary, Cork, Kerry, Wa- terford, Ennis and Shannon Airport and is expected to remove 40,000 vehicles per day from Limerick city. Along with the tunnel, the scheme involves the construction of 10km of road, 11 bridges and a 750m cause- way across Bunlicky Lake.
400 workers are employed in the contstruction which involves five separate 100m long elements.
In August of next year the contrac- tor will commence flooding the cast- ing basin before winching the com- pleted tunnel sections into a dredged section of the River Shannon.
The “immersed tube tunnel con- struction approach” is the same method used to construct the Jack Lynch tunnel in Cork.
The road, the first to be tolled in the west of Ireland, is being built through a Public Private Partner- ship (PPP) and as a result, the State’s spend on the scheme is €349 mil- lion. The contract for the scheme is 6,000 pages long.
The €810 million cost of the scheme includes the operational costs and maintenance of the route over the 35 year operation and the annual maintenance and operation- al costs amount to millions of euro TO SMA ore be
Direct Route is a consortium of companies made up of John Sisk & Son Holdings Ltd., Lagan Holdings
Ltd, Roadbridge Ltd and Strabag AG along with financial institutions.
General Manager of Direct Route, Tom King said: “The Public Private Partnership (PPP) won an award for the way the funding was set up.
“It is very unique and through Hali- fax Bank of Scotland, bonds are to be issued into the marketplace every month.”
Mr King believes that €100 million will be raised through the issuing of the bonds.
An NRA spokesman defended the PPP system saying it allowed the work to start sooner.