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06 Sept 2025
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06 Sept 2025
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Ballinrobe's Main Street
THE long wait for a bypass of Ballinrobe has prompted a local representative to call for changes to laws regarding the procurement of new roads.
Cllr Damien Ryan said Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) should have to purchase or dispose of land if they have not developed it within ten years of selecting it for a potential road.
Tracts of land were precluded from development after being selected for route options for the Ballinrobe bypass several years previously. This resulted in the sterilisation of tracts of land outside the town.
“The new route will probably follow the corridor, and I don’t think anybody would have any resistance to that route,” said Cllr Ryan.
“If the route is obsolete after ten years … they either purchase it or the route comes off, because it’s unfair on the landowners.”
Local representatives have long expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of progress on the Ballinrobe bypass, which is currently at Phase 0.
The bypass was first included on the local area plan in 2009 but was shelved in later years. The project resumed at the start of 2024 when an employee was appointed to Mayo County Council’s National Roads Office to begin preparing a strategic assessment report on the bypass.
Cllr Ryan (Fianna Fáil) and Cllr Michael Burke (Fine Gael) said the sterilisation of land for the proposed road had stymied development in Ballinrobe, which has suffered from traffic congestion in recent years. Traffic lights were installed in the town last year as an alleviation measure.
Support
CLLRS Burke and Ryan’s remarks were supported by Cllr Richard Finn (Independent) and Cllr Gerry Murray (Sinn Féin).
Cllr Murray said a similar situation arose near Charlestown, where land was ‘frozen’ as part of the route options selection phase for the new N17.
Conrad Harley, Senior Executive Engineer with Mayo County Council, said that the local authority had no say regarding TII’s road selection processes.
“The current process is, once a job comes back on their radar, they insist on going back to point zero and starting again,” said Mr Harley.
The head of the Mayo County Council’s National Roads Office, Paul Hyland, has said it may take until 2033 for the Ballinrobe bypass to be opened.
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