A planned road construction project in Co Antrim will be a "triumph for co-operation politics", according to a local politician.

With employment on the building project looming, the SDLP's East Antrim candidate Justin McCamphill has said the construction of a dual carriageway from Larne to the M2 outside Belfast will be an example of the kind of co-operation politics that the SDLP has practised and preached since its formation.

He said: "Larne Port is the single greatest economic asset in this constituency and must be the key to its regeneration. Improving the link to the island-wide motorway network is a vital step towards that objective.

"Every voter in this constituency needs to know that taxpayers across the island are putting their hands in their pockets to pay for the A8 improvement.

"It is a key element in the Irish Republic's National Development Plan 2013, made possible by the North/South co-operation, which the SDLP campaigned for over many years and wrote into the Good Friday Agreement.

"Co-operation goes even wider than that since the project also involves EU funding. It is not about altruism. Co-operation can be self-interested because it makes everyone richer. But it does require some generosity of spirit and that has been sadly lacking in some representatives elected in East Antrim."

Mr McCamphill continued: "Every voter in East Antrim needs to reflect on the reality that this vital project would not be happening – not an inch of it - if narrow political interests had been allowed to prevail, if dogged resistance to North-South links had been allowed to derail it," he said.

(NS/GK)