Some Cork roads may have to wait for decades for upgrades due to funding shortfall 

SOME local and regional roads in Cork can expect to be upgraded once every 50 years because they receive less per kilometre than all but two other counties in the State, councillors attending a recent meeting of Cork County Council were told.

County Cork has 12,000km of roads, Ireland’s largest network. Figures show that Cork County Council received €6,011/km in the 2023 allocation from Government for local and regional roads. This compares to, for example, the €10,062.97/km for Limerick City and County Council.

Allocation

The council’s director of roads services Niall Healy said that if Cork were to receive a similar allocation to Limerick it would have received “an additional €47.5m”, bringing the allocation for 2024 to €118.8m rather than the €71.3m which was allocated for Cork’s local and regional roads.

While an additional €13m was allocated for repairing flood-damaged roads in East Cork, this figure wasn’t included in the county council analysis because it was an additional allocation granted due to the exceptional damaged caused during Storm Babet and other rainfall events.

The analysis was shared with the meeting after a motion that had been approved at a recent meeting of the West Cork Municipal District was proposed for consideration at full council by Fianna Fáil’s councillor Joe O’Carroll, who said that West Cork was “being badly left behind”.

“It’s being made very clear to us by the engineers in West Cork that the amount of money they get each year for roads, road maintenance and upkeep, in West Cork is only good enough for 2% of the roads that they have,” he said.

“That means that every road you have in West Cork, regional or whatever you want to call them, will never ever again get a visit for 50 years.”

Shocking

Councillor Karen Coakley, a West Cork independent councillor, highlighted the streets of Skibbereen which she said were in “an absolutely shocking state”.

Several other councillors got involved in a lengthy debate and the West Cork motion was expanded to include the divisions of South Cork and North Cork.

While councillors were in unanimous agreement that council engineers were delivering when they got funding, they also agreed that the necessary funding wasn’t being provided.