Irish nationalists seek to give meaning to call for all-island transport plan

A Sinn Fein representative has welcomed a call from business groups from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for all-island transport planning.

The Irish nationalist Conor Murphy said following the vote for the U.K to leave the EU it was "important that we prepare on an all-Ireland basis for a moden, efficient infrastructure and transport network," it was reported. He was commenting in the wake of two major business groups, Ibec and the CBI, setting out proposals for cross-island planning, underlining that Brexit demanded "a new, concerted and coordinated policy response to mitigate the significant risks it poses". 

The two groups say in the report, Connected: A Prosperous island of 10 million people, that the inter-urban road network is "far from complete" and they want "planning to start now" so that 85% of the island's population to live within 10km of an inter-urban route, with immediate priorities to better link Dublin and Belfast with the M1/A1 Sprucefield bypass, major upgrades to the N20 from Cork to Limerick, the capacity of the M50, the N15 linking Letterkenny to Sligo, and completing upgrades to the A5 and A6 to Derry/Londonderry and the north-west.

They set their sights on off-balance sheet financing from strategic investment funds, European Investment Bank Funds - which Labour pressed the PM to ensure that the U.K can still tap into - and the European Commission via the Juncker plan.