Wind farm company will partially fund road works in Offaly

THE company building the Yellow River Wind Farm in north Offaly is contributing towards the cost of an upgrade to the R400 road nearby.

While a meeting of Edenderry Municipal District was told that SSE is part funding the road works, councillors were not given a figure.

The work will be undertaken this year by Offaly County Council and will be paid for by both the State and SSE.

“There is an arrangement in place there between the developer SSE and Offaly County Council that Offaly will take ownership for remedial works to be undertaken there and there is currently detailed design being done by the roads section of Offaly County Council,” said Mr Harte.

He described the scheme, which will be going to tender soon, as “fairly significant” and is part of overall work being done on the R400 on a phased basis.

“Yellow River did provide a monetary contribution towards that,” he said.

Cllr Liam Quinn, Fine Gael, explained that the Department of Transport had given Offaly €1million for a pilot scheme on roads which have been built over peat and it was then decided to pool that money with the Yellow River Wind Farm contribution.

“It was decided it was better value to put it all together. It will be a job that will have it done for a long time,” said Cllr Quinn.

Responding to concerns from Cllr Noel Cribbin, Fine Gael, on whether all the peat would be extracted from underneath the existing road as part of the rebuild, Mr Harte said it would neither be economically viable or environmentally correct to do so.

Peat to a depth of 1-1.5m will be removed and structural geo grid layers will be within the build-up of the road.

“That will provide added strength that will hopefully offset the peat that's still remaining underneath.”

Further concerns were then raised by district chair, Cllr Fergus McDonnell, who said that previous hot dry summers had caused peat underneath other roads to shrink, damaging good work which had been done.

Mr Harte said “shrink swell” does occur on roads with a peat base but it is hoped the peat remaining under the R400 will be at a sufficient depth.

Another engineer at the meeting, Enda Daly said the geosynthetics used in the reconstruction will add “a lot more structure” to the road and hold the pavement together even if the peat dries out underneath.

Striking a positive note, Cllr Cribbin said he believed there was now “light at the end of the tunnel” and perhaps the solution used on the R400 could be applied on other bog roads.

Cllr Quinn said another positive outcome will be that no further laying of cables will be allowed on the road so instead of putting trenches down the middle of the road different routes will have to be used with agreement from landowners.

The R400 links north Offaly and Rhode village with the M6 Dublin-Galway motorway near Rochfortbridge in Co Westmeath and has long been the subject of criticism by motorists and residents.

A bridge collapse on the road had to be repaired last year and significant diversions were in place while a new one was being built.