Debate contribution: A5: Delivery
Debate contribution by Mr Patrick Brown on .
- MLA
- Mr Patrick Brown
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 5 March 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- A5: Delivery
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4252999
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. As this is my first time addressing you in the Chair, I congratulate you on your new position. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate as an Alliance Party infrastructure spokesperson and a member of that Committee. I thank the Member for West Tyrone for bringing this to the Chamber. I hope that the debate contributes to a renewed sense of momentum behind this important, major road project. We could say a lot about the scheme and its benefits to the area and to the major towns of Omagh and Strabane. However, perhaps the most important factor to reflect on is that, since the original plans for the road were launched in 2007, almost 50 people have died on what is one of the most dangerous roads on these islands. The A5 serves an enormous number of side roads, houses, farms and other accesses. Those many junctions, combined with increased vehicular traffic in recent decades, is the main reason why the road is so dangerous and why we must deliver an alternative. In one year alone, between October 2021 and October 2022, 10 people tragically lost their lives on the A5. The road accounts for 11% of road deaths in Northern Ireland. Yet it is the main road linking Donegal with Dublin, as well as Derry, Omagh and Strabane, carrying over 17,000 vehicles per day. The route is a crucial part of our infrastructure, economy and North/South connectivity, yet it is a single-carriageway road for most of its 58-mile length, with just a few overtaking lanes. Simply focusing on minor mitigation schemes will not do enough to secure road safety on the A5. Such works, as have been the practice to date, are only a sticking plaster, and, whilst we know that the cost of the scheme is significant — as much as £1·6 billion — it is also vital for the safety of road users that we deliver it, the largest road project in the history of Northern Ireland. We have seen the inflation of capital-build costs of other projects make the headlines in recent days, and that serves as a lesson: where we have crucial infrastructure to build, time is of the essence in case costs spiral even further upwards. Consider, for example, that the project was estimated to cost £800 million in 2007. Now that we have the welcome commitment from the Irish Government to provide €600 million towards the cost, it is on the Executive to come up with a plan for its delivery that may include asking the Irish Government to meet their original commitment to fund half the project, given that their current contribution equates to roughly a third of the total cost. Whilst a phased approach may undermine the cost-benefit analysis informing the business case, it would make perhaps most sense to focus on the sections linking Derry and Strabane and Omagh to Ballygawley, given how highly those stretches figure in fatality statistics. The economic ripple effect of the project in Strabane and Omagh would be huge and would breathe new life into those important but often forgotten towns, given the improved linkages that it would also create with the cities of Derry, Belfast and Dublin. I conclude by recognising those who have campaigned tirelessly over many years to make the plans a reality, particularly the 'A5 Enough is Enough' campaign, its founders Tyrone GAA and all the families who have lost someone on the A5. I also recognise the broad, cross-party support for the scheme and the efforts of our councillor in Omagh, Stephen Donnelly, who has worked hard to see it progress. I hope that all parties will come together at the Executive to finally see the project funded and delivered.
627 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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