The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
80% OF ROADS BUDGET BLOWN IN NORTH KERRY
80 per cent of the budget to repair and maintain North Kerry’s regional and local roads network has already been blown, less than halfway through the year.
And it’s placing even more pressure on the biggest source of funding for road works in the area, threatening to leave an already crumbling local road network in an absolutely deplorable state by the end of the year.
That’s if the Government fails to take action now and increase its investment into the network in the Listowel Municipal District, which covers most of the county north of Tralee and Castleisland, Fianna Fáil councillor Jimmy Moloney warned this week.
The problem stems from the cuts to the Roads Programme, one of the principal funds for carrying out wide-ranging repairs to the regional roads. The cuts are such that the existing regional and local roads improvement fund is now running at just 20 per cent of its budget for the year - with much of the funding having been used to buttress the more large-scale work which is ostensibly provided for by the Roads Programme.
“We were informed that 80 per cent of our Regional and Local Roads Improvement Scheme has been used already at a time when people are extremely frustrated with the state of the roads network, particularly the local roads in the districtm” Cllr Moloney said.
Council officials explained to elected members at a meeting in Listowel on Monday that the extraordinarily rapid depletion of the maintenance coffers was due to the effects of the long, wet winter and the continuing underfunding from central government.
“The Roads Programme funding is at about 60 per cent of what it was ten years ago. Even the Department admits that funding is currently at 70 per cent of what it should be and that’s just to keep things from getting any worse. And at the current rate of funding in the roads programme it would take 30 years to get the whole network surfaced. Just 30kms of the 909kms has been done so far. And it is this that is causing the funding, swallowing up the maintenance funding,” Cllr Moloney added.
The Council accepted his proposal to write to Minister for Transport Shane Ross seeking immediate help.
“We can’t afford another bad winter. If we do get one it’s going to be so much worse. People were patient throughout the long winter but they’re becoming extremely frustrated with the situation now. We urgently neet emergency funding now to make it through next winter with passable roads.”