A planned road construction project in Co Antrim will be a "triumph for co-operation politics", according to a local politician.

With employment on the building project looming, the SDLP's East Antrim candidate Justin McCamphill has said the construction of a dual carriageway from Larne to the M2 outside Belfast will be an example of the kind of co-operation politics that the SDLP has practised and preached since its formation.

He said: "Larne Port is the single greatest economic asset in this constituency and must be the key to its regeneration. Improving the link to the island-wide motorway network is a vital step towards that objective.

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"Every voter in this constituency needs to know that taxpayers across the island are putting their hands in their pockets to pay for the A8 improvement.

"It is a key element in the Irish Republic's National Development Plan 2013, made possible by the North/South co-operation, which the SDLP campaigned for over many years and wrote into the Good Friday Agreement.

"Co-operation goes even wider than that since the project also involves EU funding. It is not about altruism. Co-operation can be self-interested because it makes everyone richer. But it does require some generosity of spirit and that has been sadly lacking in some representatives elected in East Antrim."

Mr McCamphill continued: "Every voter in East Antrim needs to reflect on the reality that this vital project would not be happening – not an inch of it - if narrow political interests had been allowed to prevail, if dogged resistance to North-South links had been allowed to derail it," he said.

(NS/GK)