Moves to get Drogheda’s long delayed Port Access Northern Route (PANCR) development started may have taken a step forward yesterday when it was confirmed that Louth County Council is in negotiations with a group of property developers on funding for the project.
Although it is vital to the future of Drogheda in so many ways, and despite a long litany of promises from politicians, funding for the PANCR has failed to materialise over the last 14 years or more despite applications from Louth County Council on several occasions.
If and when it happens the PANCR will open up a large tract of land North of Drogheda for housing and other development including business and recreation. Certainly the developers are anxious to move on to their sites and get building.
In 2018 Louth County Council lodged plans for the PANCR that would open up 254 hectares of land for over 6,000 new houses to cater for the expected population increase of 20,000 people.
It was one of the hot topics at the last general election with all parties promising to push the plans through if elected. The election resulted in Drogheda getting three local TD’s, all of whom promised that the PANCR would be top of their agendas, but still nothing happened.
At a special meeting on housing and homelessness in Drogheda in March 2019 Darragh O’Brien TD, the current Housing Minister who was Fianna Fáil’s Spokesperson on Housing and Local Government at the time, was fulsome in his support for the Northern Cross Route and its potential to eliminate the housing crisis in the town.
The road itself would also take much of the HGV traffic generated by the Drogheda Port and other industrial sites out of the town but the application was knocked back in November 2019.
In March 2021, Darragh O’Brien, this time in his role as Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, announced €35.1 million in funding for three regeneration projects in the North-East region but the PANCR was not among them.
The PANCR has never been far from the political agenda locally for many years and it raised its head again yesterday when Louth County Council’s Chief Executive Joan Martin was asked for an update.
Drogheda Life contacted Ms Martin today and she said:
“I was asked a question about a particular development and whether individual developers were each going to build sections of the PANCR.
“I advised the Council that I was in discussions with a group of developers and that I was optimistic that a consortium could be formed who would construct Phase 1 of the PANCR from Rosehall Roundabout to the Ballymakenny Road.”
This has been taken in some quarters to mean that the cost of building the road itself, which was originally to be looked after by the Council, will now be shared between the property developers and the Council.
