Green light for new road in Portlaoise
The new route in Portlaoise will link the Dublin Road and the Borris Road. Image: Google Maps
A NEW road that will connect two busy routes in Portlaoise has received a green light, under a national €1bn fund to ‘unlock’ land for housing.
The new route will link the town’s Dublin Road with the Borris Road, opening up access to land for the construction of thousands of new homes.
It will also provide a much-needed alternative route for heavy school traffic on the Borris Road, where more than 1,500 students attend St Mary’s CBS and Scoil Chríost Rí.
The road will run from the new Rath Rua housing estate on the Dublin Road to the new Dargan Wood housing development on the Borris Road.
The ‘urban distributor road’ is one of two Portlaoise infrastructural projects that were granted funding on 16 June, under the government’s €1bn Housing Infrastructure Investment Fund (HIIF).
The second project is the Dublin Road/Colliers Lane junction enhancement scheme, which is already nearing completion.
According to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, both Portlaoise projects will ‘directly unlock lands with capacity for 1,909 residential units and indirectly unlock a further 1,909 residential units’.
The HIIF is described by the government as ‘a major multi-annual commitment to unlocking land’ to provide housing at scale. The programme provides capital funding for public infrastructure projects that ‘remove critical bottlenecks and enable housing development’.
The Laois Co Council projects in Portlaoise are among 82 infrastructural developments selected for funding nationally, under the first phase of the HIIF programme.
The council said that the projects ‘support existing, background residential development and also serve to unlock other lands for the delivery of additional housing’.
Welcoming the announcement, Laois Co Council director of services Simon Walton said: “The two projects are important to support the orderly, sustainable, development of Portlaoise and to address infrastructure shortfalls. Improving infrastructure across Laois is of vital importance for housing delivery.”
He added that the council looked forward to further engagement with the HIIF programme, “such that other infrastructural obstacles to the delivery of housing can be addressed”.
