United front sought for the lobbying of Mallow relief road

THE lobbying to get the necessary funding to make meaningful progress on developing Mallow’s long sought after relief road will continue and all the elected members, whatever their party, will be wearing the same jersey, councillors attending the Kanturk/Mallow municipal district meeting pledged.

They were speaking following the announcement of an allocation of €300,000 for the project as Transport Infrastructure Ireland revealed the amount it was allocating to National roads across the country.

The announcement prompted Cork East Labour TD Seán Sherlock to describe the sum allocated to the Mallow relief road as ‘abysmal’ and it seemed that was a fair description given Cork County Council had received a total of €61.8m to spend on improving national roads in the county, on top of a further €81.3m for local and regional roads in two separate announcements in the past two weeks.

The Labour TD had also challenged the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors in Mallow by suggesting any attempts to spin the announcement as a ‘good news’ story would require them to get a ‘reality check’.

Cllr Gearóid Murphy of Fianna Fáil proposed a motion urging his fellow councillors to continue to lobby for the Mallow Relief Road at Friday’s meeting.

“Whatever our political jersey, we are all wearing the same jersey when it comes to lobbying for Mallow and the North Cork area, particularly when it comes to this road,” said Cllr Murphy.

“And I think it is fair to say we are also all agreed on the need to continue lobbying for and fighting for this road on an ongoing and continuing basis into the foreseeable future.” While Cllr Tony O’Shea of Fine Gael said he had been informed by senior Council officials that the sum allocated was enough to get to final design status, others were under the impression that it might enable the Council to begin the lengthy process required in terms of compulsory purchase orders for lands that might be needed.

Earlier in the week, Mallow Development Partnership had issued a statement saying the allocation for the relief road fell ‘well short of the €1.2m sought by Cork County Council’ to bring the project to the planning stage’.

“Unless it is significantly increased, it will be another serious setback in this very long running campaign,” said John McDonnell of the Mallow Development Partnership and Estelle Varney of Mallow Chamber of Commerce in a joint statement under the banner of Mallow Relief Road Alliance.