22 October 2003: There was jubilation among residents of Jigginstown Park & Green on the Newbridge Road in Naas following the absolute rejection by Kildare County Councillors on Monday of a planned link road through their estates.
The issue was part of the of the Caragh Road Realignment (Phase 2) set to cost €3.6m. The proposed link through the estates would connect the Newbridge Road with the Caragh Road. It would have involved building a 24m high bridge across the canal. The scheme was recommended by Kildare County Council officials.
“Every councillor was against it,” Cllr Mary Glennon emphasised. She suggested during the meeting that if Naas Town Council was closing off the Sycamores Estate on the Sallins Road to traffic, a precedent had been set as councillors were against roads through housing estates.
“Have the Sycamores residents more rights than the residents of Jigginstown Park/Green?” she demanded at the meeting.
She told Director of Services Joe Boland that she was puzzled since he didn’t want heavy traffic to go over the Ploopluck Bridge on the Caragh Road but ‘it was OK for HGVs to go through a housing estate where small children played’.
She proposed that they build a pedestrian bridge over the canal so that residents of the Caragh Road could walk in safety to the town, through Jigginstown Park and that traffic could continue to use the Caragh Road into the town until the new road is built further out the Newbridge Road which would link the Newbridge Road with the Caragh Road.
An angry county manager Niall Bradley said the road and new bridge through Jigginstown Park/Green had been planned since the early 1990s.
Cllr Glennon then asked why in all that time, the planners had made no allowances for traffic to turn in and out of Jigginstown Park.
“They allowed the houses to be built right up to the edge of the road. At the moment there are accidents at the turn in every week and if they bring a higher volume of traffic there, traffic lights won’t be able to cope. There is no room to build a roundabout as the people in the ESB houses across from the entrance/exit into Jigginstown Park, who own that greens trip, have objected,” Cllr Glennon said.
FF Cllr PJ Sheridan asked that the matter be referred back to Naas Town Council.
The detailed drawing of the area provided to councillors prior to Monday's vote failed to show any of the new houses in Jigginstown Green but DID include Naas Town Council’s new social and affordable houses presently under construction across the canal.
This DESPITE the fact that the map is dated October 2002 and was produced by Roughan & O'Donovan, Consulting Engineers, and carries the logos of both Kildare County Council and Naas Town Council.
The first houses in Jigginstown Green have been occupied for at least two years! Jigginstown Green is built on the triangular field beneath the circle below, marked in red.
