by Shane McDonald | Mar 21, 2010 | In The News
The M9 motorway between Waterford and Danesfort will open at 11am tomorrow morning (Monday 21st March) but will be overshadowed by protests against the limiting of the service of the search and rescue helicopter based in Waterford to operating in daylight hours. It is hoped that traffic will be flowing by 2pm, and the M9 will bypass Mullinavat, Ballyhale, Stoneyford and Knocktopher – taking up to 25 minutes off the average journey from Kilkenny.
The protests mentioned above relate to the helicopter which is based at Waterford Airport and provides search & rescue cover to the Irish Sea and Atlantic Coasts around Waterford, Wexford and beyond. If somebody is in difficulty at 9:30pm just off Tramore Bay, they will have to wait 40 minutes for a helicopter to come from Shannon instead of waiting 2 minutes for one from Waterford Airport.
A Facebook Group called “Save 24hr Search & Rescue Helicopter Cover in South-East” is now available to Join – Click here to Join the Facebook Group
It will be interesting to see what Noel Dempsey has to say on the visit the South East – the area where the essential helicopter service is based. Some text from the facebook groups page says that the Irish Government saved a measly €1m euro by not having a 24 hour service – so lives lost are basically ok as long as we can have savings and two days after making this decision they spent the equivalent money traveling around the world in the Government Jet for St.Patricks Day and filling their stomachs.
There is an on-line petition which you can sign to Save the South-Easts 24hr Search & Rescue Helicopter Cover : http://www.petitiononline.com/sar01/
It is good to see our motorway link coming to the south-east at last but it is the government giving with one hand and taking away with the other. There are plenty of other things they could save money on … but a life saving service should not be one of them.
by Shane McDonald | Dec 17, 2009 | In The News
Minister Noel Dempsey reversed his decision to open the M9 Motorway on 8th Jan 2010 and the motorway will now be opened on Monday 21st December between 12 midday and 2pm with varying setups for north and south traffic.
The website boards.ie was inundated with posts about the M9 situation with calls made to the media and radio stations such as WLR FM, Kildare FM, Joe Duffy and Today FM. At lunchtime the decision was made to go ahead and open the new stretch of Motorway on the date set out in Tuesdays Irish Times. At one point there was a “People Power” movement which was going to go to the motorway at 2pm and manually move the bollards – i.e. the people would open the Motorway if the NRA did not.
Thankfully sense was seen through and all is well again in the world!
This should really cut down driving times to Waterford and Kilkenny from Dublin as well as getting rid of the usual delays at Castledermot (or Hassledermot) as it was called this week.
At Last ; Goodbye N9 at Castledermot – Hello M9.
by Shane McDonald | Dec 16, 2009 | In The News, Ireland
The section of M9 between Carlow and Kilcullen was (unofficially) due to open on Thursday 17th December. A more official date was published by AA and the Irish Times of Monday 21st December at 2pm with Motorway open to traffic by 3pm. However this opening of the new Motorway section has apparently been delayed until 8th Jan 2010.
Today, the Irish Times reported that the “€300 million motorway from Kilcullen, Co Kildare, to Carlow is to open next Monday, some nine months ahead of schedule. The 27km stretch of motorway will provide a bypass of Castledermot and a new national secondary road to Athy town via the junction at Mullamast in Co Kildare.”
There are many sources on the web which now state that “the opening of the Kilcullen-Carlow link has been deferred until January by request of the Transport Minister.”
This makes total sense because the the Ministers are on Christmas holidays from this Friday … and they don’t come back to work until way after Christmas because they got an extra weeks holidays.
So it seems that the comfort and “Holiday Time” of a minister is better than a few people being killed or injured on a stretch of road which is 80Km to 100Km but where cars overtake you at 120Km with no Garda speedchecks. Last year on this stretch of road there were a multitude of crashes one of which claimed the lives of 2 people in one crash.
It will be interesting to see if the NRA will step in or if Minister Noel Dempsey will back down and cut the ribbon on the date specified.
The fact that a finished and totally usable 27km stretch of Motorway lies unused just because a Minister will not go and cut a ribbon just to get his photo in the paper is disgraceful.
…And they say our government is overpaid and out of touch?
There’s more proof!
