Funding allocation for Mallow Relief Road not enough to get to planning stage, councillors told 

THE funding allocation of €300,000 only gets halfway to the threshold necessary to get the long-awaited Mallow Relief Road to planning stage, Cork County Council’s director of roads, Niall Healy, has told councillors.

Mr Healy’s response to queries from elected members contradicted the assertion by Transport Minister Eamon Ryan, who told the Dáil recently that the allocation of €300,000 would “now allow the project to be progressed through the planning and design process”.

Funding sought 

In his responses to elected members, Mr Healy said that €1.2m in funding had been sought initially to advance the project to planning stage.

“That would also allow us engage with landowners and commence advanced works in that regard,” he said.

“Now we need at least €700,000 to deliver this project to planning stage, we have €300,000 — doing the maths on that will only get you halfway to planning stage.

“We have engaged with Transport Infrastructure Ireland, we have explained to them that this is not enough.

“Notwithstanding the comments by the minister in the Dáil, that the money that is allocated is sufficient and adequate to bring it to planning stage, that is absolutely not the case. At this point in time, we don’t have a line [of] sight about where the €700,000 is going to come from; we’ve some ideas and some suggestions for TII in that regard, but as of now we haven’t any commitment as to the sum that we need.”

Fianna Fáil councillor for the Mallow-Kanturk municipal district, Gearóid Murphy, said he was aware that engineers had been reactivated on the project design.

“However, it would appear to me that we’re really only funded to work on this for the first half of the year and if we want to progress the project past midsummer, we will need extra funding.”

'Mixed messages'

His municipal district colleague Fine Gael councillor Tony O’Shea, said there had been mixed messages regarding the project and described the overall allocation for regional and local roads as disappointing.

“Minister Ryan seems to think that he has allocated enough money to progress the Mallow Relief Road and we’re hearing this morning that we don’t have enough money,” he said.

Responding to Mr O’Shea’s queries at a meeting of the council this week, the council’s director of roads, Mr Healy, said that if no funding had been allocated in 2024, it would have presented a “very serious challenge”.

“The work we have done to date would have timed out and we’d be effectively back to square one,” said Mr Healy.

Labour Party councillor Eoghan Kenny, also from the Mallow-Kanturk municipal district, said that he was concerned the Mallow Relief Road would “fall off the Government’s radar” and described the allocation of €300,000 as “extremely disappointing news”.

“This Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Green Government are failing the people of Mallow and the surrounding towns and villages,” said Mr Kenny.

“The Mallow Relief Road is in severe danger of falling off this Government’s radar, and the fact that Cork County Council are not confident of securing or sourcing extra funding means the relief road is going to be delayed by another year.

“We have a traffic congestion crisis on our Main Street, and this has not been addressed since this council term started in June 2019.

“We need the extra funding, and we need it now,” said Mr Kenny.