No money for local roads
Local businesses should be asked to sponsor roundabouts, Fianna Fail councillor Conor Keelan urged at the monthly meeting of Louth County Council.
He asked the council to consider a scheme where local businesses can sponsor a roundabout, pointing out that similar schemes were operated by Meath and Wexford County Councils, with the sponsorship cost determined by the amount of passing traffic.
It would be an incentive for local businesses to get involved in funding the landscaping and maintenance the roundabouts and all businesses could be considered except those promoting the sale of alcoholic drinks and tobacco products.
Cllr Maria Doyle suggested that the Tidy Towns Committees be consulted.
While she supported the motion, Cllr Anne Campbell said that ‘ the other major evil empire of fast food companies’ should be included in the banned list.
‘I would not be happy to see fast foot outlets using it as a way of marketing their evil empire.’
‘ The biggest and most powerful lobby in the world is not the arms lobby but the food lobby,’ she continued. ‘ These are the people making our children fat. They market and target adults and children in a particular way.’
Cllr Marianne Butler suggested that the gambling industry also be excluded and that a common sense approach be taken. Louth County Council has no budget for carrying out repairs to class 3 local roads, Cllr Dolores Minogue was told at the local authority’s monthly meeting.
She had urged the Council to review its policy in relation to the maintenance of tertiary roads, saying that ‘many of these roads are in very poor condition and are badly in need of repair.’
Chief Executive Ms Joan Martin said that the Council had never directly funded these roads but there had been 50;50 schemes to which local communities contributed.
‘The Department has no funds available,’ she said. She explained that the Council couldn’t transfer money from one category of roads to another.
‘I don’t know where the money would be diverted from.’
Cllr Pearse McGeogh complained that they were taking money off people who live on tertiary roads. It was, he argued ‘a civil right that they require access to their homes’.
The money which people were paying in development levies was going into a central fund and was not being directed as it should, he claimed,
Ms Martin replied that levies are distributed on a countywide basis as was set out in the conditions of the scheme. ‘They are absolutely not for the area in which they are collected,’ she stated