Plans to replace the roundabout at Daly’s SuperValu on Park Road with a new junction featuring five or six sets of traffic lights on either side of the road have been branded premature by a Kerry TD.
Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said under the previous government’s active travel plans, the €3 million proposal is to remove the roundabout and have a traffic lights system in place as far as the Ballycasheen junction on the Cork road side.
Two sets of cycleways and footpaths are also proposed and there are plans to narrow the carriageway to six metres which, Deputy Healy-Rae contends, is not wide enough.
“What we need now is to build an outer bypass which we have been campaigning for 24 or 25 years. All of what is proposed now would be fine if that were done first,” he said.
Deputy Healy-Rae has suggested that before the Daly’s Roundabout project goes ahead, temporary traffic lights should be placed for a week or two at every point where it is suggested there will be lights to ensure that they will work and there will not be a complete disaster.
“We are bad enough with traffic in Killarney as it is. A similar project has been carried out in Fossa where they narrowed the road and two large vehicles cannot pass each other without stopping up altogether, trying to inch their way past each other,” the Independent TD said.
He has asked Department of Transport to travel to Kerry to look at this project with the officials involved.
Deputy Healy-Rae said approximately 40,000 vehicles pass through Daly’s Roundabout each day, with 18,000 or 19,000 going into Killarney town and 21,000 on to the bypass.
“The roundabout itself works perfectly. I never see it clogged or blocked,” he insisted.
Minister of State at the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, Charlie McConalogue, said he understands from Transport Infrastructure Ireland that Kerry County Council engaged consultants to review safety and capacity issues on the N22 and its approaches and to introduce improved active travel facilities at the N22-Park Road junction.
A signalised junction was identified as the preferred solution recommended by Kerry County Council and it is proposed to reallocate some of the existing road space on the carriageway between Daly’s Roundabout and Ballycasheen junction to provide space for a new active travel facility.
The minister said this would reduce the width of the existing carriageway down to seven metres to provide space for the construction of a 2.5m cycle track. Having regard to Kerry County Council’s recent approval of the scheme, it will be considered for funding in the 2026 funding allocations.
Deputy Healy-Rae replied: “The people of Kerry need to know what is happening because this will create chaos”.
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