REGIONAL FOCUS: LIMERICK CITY AND COUNTY COUNCIL
Limerick’s infrastructure: Road, rail, and ports
The renewed National Development Plan (NDP) set out a series of significant infrastructure priorities out to 2030. In October 2021, the Government launched the renewed National Development Plan to 2030, a planned €165 billion investment, recognised as the largest in the State’s history. Outlining a focus on priority solutions to target challenges in housing, healthcare, and the climate; the plan also seeks to secure job growth in every region and deliver economic renewal for the decade ahead. Although many of the initiatives aimed at Limerick are retained from the previous iteration of the plan, a review of priority projects has seen changes to those initial ambitions, as well as fresh impetus on other projects of note. An outline of significant NDP projects affecting Limerick include:
Roads N/M20 Initially touted as a potential motorway between the State’s second and third largest cities, Cork and
being shaped through consultation. Rather than a motorway, most recent plans suggest 80km of new and improved dual carriageway road between Cork city and Patrickswell that will provide bypasses of Mallow, Buttevant, and Charleville, with an estimated cost of between €1 and 1.5 billion.
Limerick, the N/M20 Cork has been a long-standing proposal to better connect the two cities by
Other proposed national road projects, which were
improving the transport network and improving
part of the previous NDP and are now subject to
safety above the existing N20 route.
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further approvals include: The N21/N69 Limerick to
The renewed NDP has marked the project as
Foynes road (Adare bypass); the N21 Newcastle
“subject to further approvals”, with the project still
West Bypass and the N21 Abbeyfeale Bypass.
