Positive indications of increased funding for Cork roads

A Cork South West TD has said there were positive indications of additional funding for Cork roads, including more money to deal with Storm Babet flood damage, following a meeting this week between Cork County Council officials and elected members, and the minister of state for transport, Jack Chambers.

Fianna Fáil TD Christopher O’Sullivan attended a meeting in Leinster House on Wednesday involving a Cork County Council delegation headed by County Mayor, Frank O’Flynn, and including director of roads Niall Healy.

The chief item on the agenda of the meeting was the funding for Cork roads which receive less per kilometre than all but three counties in the State. This year the total for 12,200km of local and regional roads was €73m, approximately €6,000 per kilometre.

“I took as a positive that there were indications from the meeting that Minister Chambers would be discussing with his Department the allocation for local and regional roads in Cork and there would also be discussion on specific projects, including Babet,” Mr O’Sullivan said.

“This was an incredibly important meeting — year after year, we see that Co Cork is towards the bottom in terms of average funding per kilometre of road. That needs to change, we need an allocation that reflects the amount of roads that we have in the county.

“Council engineers are having to make the most of small levels of funding.

“If they want to address the road conditions in the region they need funding to back this up.”

Questioned

Earlier on Wednesday, Senator Tim Lombard, the Cork South West-based Fine Gael member of Seanad Éireann, questioned minister for transport and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan about the allocation of funding for roads in Cork.

“Only 2-2.5% of the roads in Cork will be resurfaced per year, which means that some people will have to wait 50 years to get a road resurfaced,” he said.

“Distances in our county are a huge issue, we need a pot of funds to be put in place to make sure that the huge infrastructural issues we have with our roads can be addressed and that roads can be maintained and upgraded.”

Response

In his response, Mr Ryan said funding for national roads was the responsibility of Transport Infrastructure Ireland in conjunction with the relevant local authorities and that funding was allocated in line with the national development plan.

“On the other hand, the improvement and maintenance of the regional and local road network is the statutory responsibility of each local authority, in accordance with the Roads Act 1993,” said Mr Ryan.

“Works on these roads are funded from a council’s own resources and are supplemented by State road grants.”