Five chambers of commerce have joined forces to demand an urgent Government commitment to delivering the N24 as a single strategic transport corridor linking Limerick and Waterford during the lifetime of the current Government.<\/p>\n
The chambers representing Kilkenny, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford have warned that continued delays to the long-awaited project are undermining business competitiveness, investment and regional connectivity.<\/p>\n
Together, the five chambers represent more than 2,220 businesses employing approximately 111,000 people across the southern region.<\/p>\n
In a joint letter sent to Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien and Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers, the business groups are calling for a funded programme and timeline for the entire N24 corridor.<\/p>\n
They said the current route between Limerick and Waterford was a major constraint on economic growth, with unreliable journey times, congestion in towns along the route and poor network resilience increasing costs for businesses.<\/p>\n
“The N24 has been talked about for 20 years, that’s long enough,” the business groups said.<\/p>\n
“Businesses across the region now need certainty, a clear timeline and a commitment from Government to get this road delivered. It is essential for balanced regional development, attracting investment and ensuring the South East and Mid-West can reach their full economic potential.”<\/p>\n
The five chambers have called for the N24 to be treated as a single strategic Limerick-Waterford corridor, rather than being progressed as two separate schemes.<\/p>\n
They argued that the entire route was central to achieving the balanced regional development objectives set out under Project Ireland 2040 and should be regarded as a key tool in delivering national policy.<\/p>\n
The chambers pointed out that the N24 has received support through successive National Development Plans, the Programme for Government, the Southern Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy and a number of local authority development plans.<\/p>\n
However, they said that despite years of policy support, progress on the project had remained fragmented, underfunded and unacceptably slow.<\/p>\n
They raised concern over the timelines for the two sections of the proposed route.<\/p>\n
The Cahir to Limerick Junction project is expected to complete Phase 3 in the third quarter of 2026, while the Waterford to Cahir project received \u20ac500,000 in funding this year to enter Phase 3.<\/p>\n
They said a construction horizon of 2030 or later for one section, combined with the absence of a comparable timetable for the other, did not amount to a credible plan for the end-to-end delivery of the route.<\/p>\n
Speaking on behalf of the five chambers, the signatories said the N24 represented one of the most important regional infrastructure investments needed to strengthen economic links between the south-east and mid-west.<\/p>\n
They said the project would improve connectivity between Limerick and Waterford and support continued economic growth and investment along the corridor.<\/p>\n
The chambers have now requested a meeting with both ministers and their officials to discuss the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five chambers of commerce have joined forces to demand an urgent Government commitment to delivering the N24 as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-604194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}