Tara Toll Road Protest Friday

dublin | environment | news report Wednesday August 17, 2005 16:47 by Vincent uatuatha at yahoo dot com 087-132-3365

protest and information session this Friday

National Toll Roads (http://www.ntr.ie) are part of the preferred bidder consortium for the M3/Hill of Tara Public Private Partnership contract.

Please come to a free information session this Friday (1.00pm in ENFO) and attend an afternoon protest beside the West Link Toll bridge, which is operated by NTR.

National Tolls Roads - Two Tara Tolls

TARA ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION SESSION

Thank you all for your ongoing interest in efforts to protect the Hill of Tara.

Please attend an information session in the Lecture Hall at ENFO, 17 St. Andrew Street, Dublin 2, at 1.00pm on Friday, 19th August.

There will be four main items on the agenda.

1. The 2005 national survey that shows that 70% of 1000 people polled want the M3 rerouted away from the Hill of Tara.

2. Details of the upcoming High Court case in October 2005, which aims to protect the Hill of Tara National Monument archaeological complex and landscape.

3. A professionally developed and legally acceptable engineering solution, which will protect the Hill of Tara and offer an alternative route that is up to 2KM shorter between Navan and Dunshaughlin.

4. Details of the tolling aspects of the M3, which will have one toll booth north of the Hill of Tara and another one south of it, operating for 45 years.

Please visit http://www.hilloftara.info for details of the survey and the alternative route.

The idea is to try and get ALL political parties to back the new route.

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TARA TOLL ROAD PROTEST

There are to be two toll booths on the M3 motorway. One south and one north of the Hill of Tara. A Public Private Partnership contract is being awarded to a consortium of finance/design/build/operate companies. Eurolink (see below) looks set to win the contract and will pay for half od the excavation and motorway construction costs. They are the developer/destroyer of Tara, as much as the Government authorities.

National Toll Roads, part of Eurolink, the same company that now operates the toll bridges on the M50, is set to run the Tara tolls, for 45 years! They have made huge profits from the M50, and Tara looks set to be no different.

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SIAC in prime position to build Tara motorway
Arthur Beesley, Senior Business Correspondent

Irish Times
Wed, Aug 10, 05

A consortium involving Spanish construction firm Cintra and the Irish group SIAC is now in prime position to build the €600 million M3 motorway between Clonee and Kells, the controversial project that runs through the Tara archaeological complex.

While the route chosen by the National Roads Authority will be the subject of judicial review hearings before the High Court in October, the Eurolink consortium formed by the two companies has emerged in first place from the initial phase of the tender process.

Their success in this competition marks a second coup for the group, which is already building the multimillion euro Kilcock-Kinnegad motorway. The M3 contract will be by far the largest public-private partnership initiative undertaken to date. The 110 km project includes almost 50 km of motorway.

The consortium will be expected to fund the building of the roadway and maintain and operate it for 45 years. While the terms of the Eurolink tender were not available last night, the consortium will receive tolls on the road and a State subsidy.

Eurolink is understood to have beaten off a rival tender from the Celtic Roads group. Its members include National Toll Roads, owner of the East Link and West Link bridges, the Ascon building group and Spanish construction giant Dragados.

"We have formally advised Eurolink that the company has been identified as the tenderer with the most economically advantageous tender for the M3 Clonee-Kells project," said a spokesman for the National Roads Authority.

"The authority will now proceed with discussions with Eurolink with a view to appointing the company as provisional preferred tenderer, which potentially will lead to the award of the contract for the project."

SIAC is understood to be raising its stake in Eurolink to 25 per cent for the M3 initiative.

Two court actions may have a bearing on the eventual route of the motorway.

The first of these is a judicial review action taken by conservationist Vincent Salafia, who is calling into question directions made by Minister for the Environment Dick Roche on the treatment of archaeological sites on the route.

Mr Salafia wants to test the constitutionality of Mr Roche's decisions under the National Monuments (Amendment) Act, 2004.

He claims it is not necessary for the motorway to breach the Tara complex and says an alternative route between Navan and Dunshaughlin offers an alternative because it is shorter and would not breach the complex.

A forthcoming Supreme Court judgment in a case testing the constitutionality of the 2004 Act in the context of the Carrickmines stretch of M50 motorway may have a bearing on this case. In a judgment that was challenged on a point of law, the High Court previously upheld the constitutionality of the Act in this case.

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Please visit the National Tolls Roads web site http://www.ntr.ie

"NTR Roads, through its introduction of toll roads to Ireland pioneered the use of Public Private Partnerships (PPP's) in the country."


The shares in NTR plc are not listed on any stock exchange, but may be traded via the company’s stockbrokers as listed below. Equity research is available on the company from its stockbrokers.


http://www.ntr.ie/shares.asp

Tom Roche - Chairman

A founding Director of NTR plc, Tom is Chairman of the Board of Directors. Tom is a Director of Jury's Doyle Hotel Group and holds a number of other directorships.

Anthony McClafferty - Corporate Affairs Director

Anthony is Corporate Affairs Director having been Managing Director of the NTR Roads Division since joining the company in 1984. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Transport and Logistics, former President of the Greater Dublin Regional Executive of IBEC and a member of IBEC's Transport Concil.

http://www.ntr.ie/about%20us/_directors.htm




IRISH TIMES EDITORIAL - (Pro PPP TOLLS!)

Tolling the roads
Mon, Aug 15, 05

If we were to believe some, National Toll Roads plc is a sort of modern-day Dick Turpin pocketing exorbitant tolls from motorists for the privilege of crossing the West Link bridge on the M50.

Last March, in the wake of a 20 per cent increase in the toll for cars from €1.50 to €1.80, Senator Shane Ross tabled a motion in the Seanad calling for tolling to be suspended to relieve chronic congestion on the motorway.

As he pointed out, when the deal was done in 1987 to give NTR the benefit of toll revenue in return for building the West Link section of the M50, traffic projections estimated that about 11,000 cars per day would use the motorway. With the current figure hovering around 90,000 vehicles per day, it is clear that the toll plaza has turned into a massive money-spinner and that this bonanza will continue until 2020 when the bridge is due to revert to the State.

However, the public sector is doing very well out of it too. A report by DKM Economic Consultants, commissioned by NTR, found that the State and other agencies, including Fingal County Council, stand to gain €936 million in revenue from corporation tax, commercial rates, Vat and a steeply rising share of the receipts from tolls. That projected sum would be sufficient to fund a major upgrade of the M50, due to start later this year. NTR, according to DKM's calculations, should rake in €616 million - more than twice as much as the €239 million it has raised in revenue since the toll bridge opened in 1990.

In the light of all of these figures, the calls made by self-styled champions of hard-pressed motorists for the Government to "buy out" NTR's interest and scrap the toll altogether seem wildly misconceived; the full cost of such a radical step is estimated by DKM at more than €1.4billion - at a time when significant investment is required in new infrastructure.

Such a scenario would be even more misplaced given that An Bord Pleanála made its approval of the M50 upgrade last May conditional on the adoption of "demand management measures" not later than three years after the scheme has been completed. With traffic forecasts showing that the motorway would otherwise be carrying more than 200,000 vehicles a day as soon as the work is finished, such measures will certainly be needed to control its use if it is not to become a linear car park.

It is now up to the Government to state how it plans to confront this looming crisis. A modern electronic and variable tolling system for the M50, and other motorways, along the lines of London's congestion charge may be the price motorists must pay for an improved road network.


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