More lives will be lost along with the funding already allocated to the N2 Ardee to Castleblayney road unless the Government give its approval to progress with the upgrade. There have been 17 fatalities on this stretch of the N2 in the past 10 years. That is twice the national collision rate.
Monaghan and Louth county councils have been working with Transport Infrastructure Ireland to upgrade the existing N2 between Ardee and Castleblayney since 2018. The project had to be stopped at the design phase because Monaghan County Council did not receive sufficient funding from the Transport Department in this year's round of money allocation.
Now, Monaghan's Senator Robbie Gallagher is calling for more money to be released to allow the project to pass through the initial stages. Senator Gallagher said he pointed the fact that the N2 from Ardee to Castleblayney is "one of the most dangerous roads" in the country to Minister of State at the Department, Jack Chambers last week. And now, he told Northern Sound, he hopes "common sense will prevail".
"Minister Jack Chambers would be the Minister for State in that department and we invited him down to meet the councillors in Monaghan a number of months back, and I have been constantly on to him," Senator Gallagher told Northern Sound, "I took the occasion again last week to raise this issue and I am hopeful that common sense will prevail in that the Department of Transport will allocate the necessary funding to Monaghan County Council to complete the design work for this road, so that we can get to a point where the government can decide whether to fund the works, or not."
