No funds drawn down this year for proposed Northern Ring Road in Cork

For the second year in succession, no funding was drawn down for the proposed Northern Ring Road, information provided by Transport Infrastructure Ireland has disclosed.

The Northern Ring Road — which goes by the new title of the Cork City Northern Transport Project — aims to develop a new national road to the north of the city to connect three of the main routes into Cork: The N22 from the west, the N20 from North Cork and the M8, and the motorway to Dublin.

According to information provided by TII head of regulatory and administration Michael Kennedy in response to a query from Cork North Central Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould, there were no allocations of funding for 2024 or 2025 for the project, while allocations of €129,928 were made in 2021, €339,100 in 2022, and €56,094 in 2023. This represents an allocation of €525,122 in the period of 2021-25.

“It has not been possible to progress this project in recent years due to constraints on funding,” said Mr Kennedy. “The process of allocating funding for national road schemes in 2026 will be based on prioritisation of those schemes identified in the national development plan, along with the overall level of funding made available to Transport Infrastructure Ireland by the Department of Transport.”

Mr Gould said the failure to provide funding for the road in 2024 or 2025 was “nothing short of a scandal” and suggested that the northside of the city was being forgotten about again.

“We have been promised this road for decades,” said Mr Gould. “It is a key ingredient to ending the neglect of the northside and unlocking the full potential of our communities.

“Once again, the road was not mentioned in the National Development Plan review. It appears to have dropped entirely off the agenda of Government.”

The TD challenged transport minister Darragh O’Brien to outline how and when this road will be delivered, and said that the plans for the Northern Distributor Road, which is an internal relief road to be developed on the northside, would also be compromised.