"Someone needs to push the button" on Athlone city project

The man behind the drive to transform Athlone into a new green sustainable city with a population of 100,000 people by 2040 has said the future of the project is in the hands of the Taoiseach and his team.

Founder of the Ballymore Group and Roscommon native, Sean Mulryan, told members of Roscommon County Council this afternoon that he had brought the hugely-ambitious project for Athlone as far as he could, and he said the time had come for the State to get involved. “We need to get them to press the green button and get on with it,” he remarked.

Mr. Mulryan was attending a meeting of the Roscommon local authority at the invitation of Fianna Fáil councillor Larry Brennan, who proposed at the December meeting that members of the Ballymore Group be invited to present their vision for the development of Athlone as Ireland's first green city and the benefits this would have for county Roscommon.

The hugely-successful property developer was accompanied to the meeting by three members of the steering group for the Athlone project, David Killion, Developments Director with the Ballymore Group; Professor Brian MacCraith, former President of Dublin City University and Josephine Feehily, Chair of the TUS Governing Body.

During a 40-minute presentation on the Athlone City Vision, which was led by David Killion, elected members were given an outline of the masterplan for creating a city in Athlone. The plan centres around growing the TUS Athlone campus from its current student cohort of 6,000 students up to 25,000 students and transforming it into a centre of excellence in research, innovation and green technology. Also forming part of the hugely-ambitious masterplan is a proposal for the creation of a 5,000 bed eco-friendly student village; 20,000 new zero-carbon homes in the first phases; increasing the population of Athlone to 100,000; an enhanced and expanded riverfront city centre and road networks tailored for electic driverless buses, EV's, bikes and pedestrians.

Mr Mulryan told today's meeting that, along with his team, he has spent the past eight years working on his proposal for Athlone and, to date, he has met with “virtually every senior Minister across all parties” including Westmeath's Peter Burke, and has received “huge encouragement and support” from all quarters.

However, he said from the point of view of the Ballymore Group “we have to hand this project back to the government as that is the model that has been successful in other places” and he appealed to councillors to “get on the phone” and lobby government ministers to take the Athlone City Vision project on board. “Now is a very good time for the government to re-imagine the future, we have to start now, and indecision on this project cannot go on for another year,” said Mr Mulryan.

There was unanimous support for the proposal from the elected members of Roscommon County Council with Cllr Laurence Fallon saying the spin-off for Roscommon and the entire West of Ireland from the creation of a green city in Athlone would be “absolutely huge.”

He described the plan as “a let-off valve” for the government in view of the fact that Dublin and the M50, and also the city of Galway are “gridlocked” and there is an urgent need for more development in the midlands and the west of the country.

When asked by Council Cathaoirleach, Cllr Liam Callaghan, to outline “the next steps” for the project, Sean Mulryan said “the State is going to have to take this project on” in order for it to progress. “We have got no negatives on this, everybody says it's great, but somebody needs to push the button, we have brought it this far and it is now down to the Taoiseach and his team."

Read full report from today's meeting in this week's print edition of the Westmeath Independent, out on Wednesday.