Just when it seemed that work was certain to start on the desperately needed upgrade to the A5, the dismal and deadly prospect of yet more delays has emerged.
The Department for Infrastructure has confirmed it has received “pre-action correspondence” from an as yet unknown group or individual. Any legal challenge carries the potential of holding up work on our most dangerous stretch of road.
Little wonder that those who have campaigned to have the A5 made safer are in despair. The A5 Enough is Enough group says it is appalled because “the clear majority of people, the experts and all the political parties have spoken in support of this scheme”. West Tyrone MP Órfhlaith Begley said delays will ultimately cost lives and jeopardise the safety of “all road users”. It is hard to disagree.
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It is also worth repeating that the executive first approved the A5 upgrade in 2007. Since then, almost 60 people have died on a road that is patently unsafe for the communities it connects, the traffic it carries and its status as a strategic link between Strabane, Derry and Aughnacloy.
Several Stormont collapses in the intervening years did not help, but nor did numerous planning challenges and public inquiries.
It was fervently hoped those issues had all been dealt with when Stormont ministers gave the scheme the green light just last month.
Work was expected to start early next year on the stretch between Strabane and Ballygawley, amounting to 35 miles from the planned 53 miles of new dual carriageway. Five years of intensive construction was anticipated, at a cost of £1.2 billion. Emphasising the A5′s cross-border significance, the Irish government has pledged £500 million.
If the department and the executive can’t get a major road of life and death importance built, then our public administration really is in trouble
Infrastructure minister John O’Dowd says this new legal challenge “will potentially have huge consequences for the public purse and road safety”.
He points out that “every day that goes by risks another family receiving devastating news about a loved one that will shatter their lives”. Given the A5′s grim record, this is not political hyperbole.
However, it is also true to say that there is something wrong with our planning system if an infrastructure scheme of such strategic importance can be tripped up when it has won the backing of the executive and is emphatically in the public interest.
Mr O’Dowd’s department has been unable to work out how to pedestrianise Hill Street, a short thoroughfare in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, but it is beyond ridiculous that the A5 is somehow still vulnerable to challenge.
If the department and the executive can’t get a major road of life and death importance built, then our public administration really is in trouble.
