Cork City Council seeks €20m loan for city renewal

Cork City Council is to seek a €20m loan to renew the city centre, with the first 20% of this to be spent immediately on footpath repair.

The council’s chief executive, Valerie O’Sullivan, explained that during the process of preparing the 2025 council budget, “members highlighted the need to address the substandard condition of many of the city’s footpaths.

“As part of the budget preparation and to initiate a programme of investment in the repair and renewal of footpaths, the city council approved an increase in the local property tax to go towards the servicing of an initial loan of €4m.

“The scale and duration of the programme of works needed to meaningfully impact in improving the footpath network will be considerable, and in recognition of this, the council will pursue potential avenues for additional national funding, including under the active travel investment programme.”

She added that the council also wants to plan for additional investment in the city centre and called on councillors to support the application for an overall loan of €20m.

Ms O’Sullivan said: “The proposal will be to now draw down an initial tranche of €4m against this larger loan figure and create the facility to make further drawdowns in future years to meet strategic investment needs.”

In anticipation of the approval of the initial loan drawdown of €4m, the work of identifying priority locations across the city is now under way, and a draft of these locations will be brought to the councillors for approval in the coming weeks.

Fianna Fáil councillor Seán Martin, chairman of the council’s finance committee, previously told The Echo that under the plans, each city ward is to benefit from an initial allocation of €800,000 to address their footpaths.

Councillors welcomed the proposal, with Fianna Fáil’s Fergal Dennehy saying that currently, some elderly people are worried to leave their homes due to footpath condition, adding that he has raised this with the transport minister.

Workers’ Party councillor Ted Tynan said that he welcomed the application as “one of the victims of broken footpaths, I smashed my glasses and dashed my eyebrow after a fall”.

However, he added: “I think it’s disgraceful that the council is now reduced to borrowing money to pay for services that central Government have totally failed to allow Cork City Council to fund in its annual budget”.

A similar sentiment was expressed by Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gould, who said that the money should be provided by the Government without a need for repayment.

Fine Gael’s Des Cahill proposed an amendment suggesting that additional spending of the further €16m should be approved in advance by the council members, which was unanimously agreed, and the motion was passed.