‘Narrow Water Bridge must stay on agenda’ – McKevitt

SDLP South Down MLA Karen McKevitt said the Narrow Water Bridge remains key to any feasible tourism strategy for the whole East Border Region.

Commenting on publication of planning objections to the bridge, she spoke to Newry Times and said that most of the objections can be answered. “It really is very important that we keep our eye on the big picture and are not distracted by purely sectional or short-term interests. Tourism supports 40,000 jobs in the north and the sector aims to double revenues by 2020. If this area, which has few enough employment alternatives, is to share in that growth we must invest in the necessary infrastructure whenever we can.”

She continued, “That means we should support the bridge project and we should also take a positive attitude towards all tourism infrastructure projects where feasibility can be demonstrated. The island of Ireland gets 7-8 million visitors a year. We would only have to attract a small proportion of them to this area in order to boost employment significantly.”

“But to do that we would need to market ourselves as a region covering the Cooley Peninsula, Slieve Gullion and the Mournes – and a bridge at Narrow Water would massively improve the attractiveness of the region,” McKevitt added.

Short URL: https://newrytimes.com/?p=11600

Posted by Newry Times News on Apr 22 2012. Filed under Community, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry