I thank the Ceann Comhairle for giving me permission to raise this matter on the Adjournment and I thank the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment for coming in to listen to the case I have to make.
I do so in the context of what might appear on the surface to be something of a parochial matter, that of the finishing of a road known as the Grange Road development. There are two very good reasons for raising this matter, first, the history of attempts in the first instance by Dublin County Council, and then by Dublin Corporation, now by both authorities, together with the industrial association at Baldoyle and the residents' association at Grange Abbey, to have something done with this road urgently along with the need to upgrade access to and egress from Baldoyle Industrial Estate. Both aspects comprise one and the same issue.
Because all endeavours to date have failed to have this matter resolved the issue is that it is a road of major significance. With regard to the history I should say that, in 1970, Barrett and Co. Ltd. applied for and were granted planning permission to build 504 houses in an estate known as the Grange Abbey in Donaghmede. Later in the seventies that company went into liquidation before it could address one of the conditions of the relevant planning permission, that was the building of the Grange Abbey road extension through the estate. Consequently the estate remains unfinished to this day, almost 20 years since development there began. We are left with a long portion of road undeveloped through the estate constituting a major problem and a blight on the environment. Within the context of the green campaign of this Government I hope our cause will win some favour with the Department. In the period of time within which it has been left unattended it has remained a five-year objective of Dublin County Council up to 1985 — during which time the Minister was responsible for it — and, since then, of Dublin Corporation to have it completed. But because there have been competing, greater demands on very scarce resources available to either local authority it has never been reached or any work done on it. On the other hand, it is a road whose usage has increased considerably. For example, in a survey conducted earlier this year it was established that, in average hourly crossings, 634 vehicles use that road; 459 cars, 105 lorries, 47 vans, seven motor bikes and 16 bicycles. In addition, there are over 300 students who travel to and from Donaghmede to Baldoyle over that road and 600 students attending Grange College on the road who must cross four times daily backward and forward between their homes and the school.
Baldoyle Industrial Estate uses this road as its major access. That estate boasts approximately 100 factories, employing in the region of 3,000 people, and has the highest concentration of freight forwarding and haulage companies of any other industrial estate in this country. Consequently, access to and egress from that estate are essential to its proper development and expansion. At present traffic to and from that estate, by and large being in the business of forwarding and haulage, must have access to its nerve centre, Dublin Airport. This road was designed originally to link Baldoyle Industrial Estate with the Santry by-pass route running across the north east fringe of the city, through the Grange Abbey Estate, but has got nowhere so far.
Traffic moving out of the Baldoyle Industrial Estate turns left towards the airport and, within a matter of 100 yards, meets one of the only one-way traffic bridges in the country, that over the railway line, where traffic must await the traffic lights signal in its favour on a one-way basis. It then moves through a tortuous route, around the Grange Abbey Estate, on across the Dublin North East constituency, in a way never envisaged in conditions that will in time lead to loss of employment in that industrial estate unless something is done to rectify the matter.
The residents of that estate, in exacerbation recently, threatened to block the road in order to bring the matter to a head which would mean traffic to and from the industrial estate would cease and jobs would be threatened.
Since 1985 Dublin Corporation have been asked to address this problem. The amount of money available to the corporation, which has remained the same during the past few years, to maintain all non-primary routes in the city area is £2.65 million. There is simply no way they could complete this job within one year given the amount of their reserve. It is estimated that the work required in the corporation's area will cost £2.6 million to complete. They simply cannot afford to provide this money from the block grant given their other expenses. For example, in 1988 traffic maintenance cost £500,000, traffic management £145,000, while maintenance of other routes cost £1.2 million. Therefore, Dublin Corporation's block grant and the smaller grant of Dublin County Council are eaten up long before they could even consider undertaking any of the other major works listed in the road development plan.
This matter has been raised by me and other public representatives on behalf of the residents and industrialists of Baldoyle with the Department. On 16 February 1988 I wrote to the Minister for the Environment about this matter and in reply in a letter date 5 May 1988 he stated and I quote:
In view of the competing demands for other important road schemes in the country, the financial requirements of current major priority works in the Dublin area and the fact that the proposed roadworks would not form part of the network of national roads I regret I am not in a position to make special road grant assistance available to Dublin Corporation in this case.
The problem is that Grange Road does not form part of the national road network and, consequently, is not accorded priority by the Department. I also raised the matter with the Minister in this House in February 1989 to see if there had been any change in position. Unfortunately, there had not been and the Minister was not prepared to act. Realising that Dublin Corporation did not have the money and the Minister was not prepared to accord it priority, I wrote on 3 February 1989 to the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach, with responsibility for European development matters, Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn, who was responsible for submitting to Europe our national development plan, to ask her if she would be prepared to consider including this project in any submission to Brussels. She replied by letter on 8 February in which she confirmed that the case made on behalf of the residents and industrialists has been brought to the attention of the working group for the Dublin area. I understand that they included this project in the submission to central Government for transmission to Brussels but for some unexplained reason it was taken out before being submitted to Brussels.
We raised this matter again with Dublin Corporation at a meeting in March when they agreed to raise the case once more with the Department and explain to them that they simply do not have the resources to undertake this project and that because of this the Department might reconsider their decision and provide assistance. That is the case I wish to make and I hope I have explained why it is essential that this matter be raised on the floor of the House. This is a local matter but its implications spread far beyond the immediate locality and affect the future of Baldoyle industrial estate.
What I would ask the Minister of State to consider doing is as follows. First, I invite him to visit the area in the company of the Minister and local representatives to meet with the industrialists and representative groups of the residents and see the problem at first hand because I cannot do justice in anything I say here to the urgency of the problem. The Minister of State should come to the area at his convenience to meet the people involved and hear their case. I also ask him to consider sitting down with Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council to see if a programme of phased funding could be drawn up in an effort to meet the problem. The gaping hole in the housing estate, the bridge and industrial estate will not go away. This problem must be addressed and I hope the Minister of State will not be found wanting on this occasion.
