Limerick County Council and Newcastle West landowners are said to be "pretty close" to reaching an agreement which will finally let the controversial road go ahead as planned.
The new road, at Barnagh in Limerick, will see the construction of a separate carriageway adjacent to the existing N21, which will feature safe slip roads, junctions and stacking lanes, and will remove the dangerous bends of the current road.
According to The Limerick Leader "critical" discussions began between landowners and the council, which threatened to de-rail the entire scheme if unsuccessful.
The National Roads Authority (NRA) has indicated that funding for the road, which could cost in excess of €5 million, will be available next year. However if deals with land owners cannot be struck ahead of the planned start date of next March, the scheme would need to go through the drawn-out compulsory purchase order (CPO) process, which would see it shelved for at least a year and possibly lose its funding.
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A Facebook petition was started in favour of the road development, with nearly 3,000 people ‘liking’ the idea of the development.
The social networking site has been used as a platform for angry residents to voice their disgust about hold ups in the construction of the new road.
The last post on the petition page outlines a road accident in the middle of September.
It said: "Sorry to report another bad accident in Barnagh yesterday morning 16/9/2011. A mixture of driver error and bad road conditions, two fire appliances and an ambulance attended, along with the gardai. One woman was taken to hospital,condition not known at this stage, hopfully not serious."
"Barnagh will not go away unless it is taken away, and we all pray that local agreement with locals can be concluded to everyone’s satisfaction so the badly needed realignment can start in march," they added.
It is understood that in "three or four cases" farmers have expressed concerns about aspects of the road designs, particularly the width of planned parallel access roads for agricultural traffic.
However the representative acting on behalf of the land owners, Eddie McQuinn of McQuinn Consulting in Tralee, told the Limerick Leader that he is "quite optimistic" that deals for the sale of the land can be brokered by the end of the year.
Mr McQuinn added that farmers in the area know that the N21 at Barnagh "is a tremendous danger", and that the new road needs to go ahead.
(LB/BMcC)
