County Engineer has revealed that chances of a major road project are ‘limited’
Anton McNulty
EVEN with the likelihood of a Mayo Taoiseach and a senior Minister in the next government, the prospect of a major roads project in the county being constructed in the next number of years is ‘limited’.
The bad news for Mayo road users was given by the County Engineer, Joe Beirne when he was outlining the 2011 National Roads Allocations from the National Roads Authority. He told councillors at yesterday’s monthly meeting of Mayo County Council that since the IMF came to the country, the roads capital programme has been considerably reduced.
“The NRA spent €1.1 billion last year but in the new capital programme, they are to get €300 million in 2014 and that will be reduced further to €260 million in 2015. The prospect of a major road now starting in very limited and it will be hard to persuade the NRA to even get the N5 [Westport to Bohola] out to CPO stage. There was no grant for the N26 [Ballina to Bohola] and the prospect of getting funding is not good,” he explained.
In this year’s NRA allocation to Mayo, the county received a substantial increase from €12 million to €19 million in its budget but despite this, the majority of the money will be spent on pavement and minor works for the National Secondary Routes.
The news that Mayo is unlikely to get funding in the future to improve its road infrastructure was met with disappointment in the Council Chamber. Fine Gael General Election candidate, Cllr Michelle Mulherin said that the county had been sold out by the last government and all the talk about developing the N26 was ‘a cod’.
“The feeling about the N26 is that it was a bit of a cod. We sent in feasibility studies like we were directed to by our government TD’s including our current Minister and we can’t even receive a €300,000 grant to design the road. We were sold out to the Greens in the revised programme of government by Fianna Fáil. It was the tail wagging the dog,” she said.
The state of the county’s roads was one of the main items of the meeting’s agenda with Mr Beirne saying that the number of potholes were high for the time of the year and it was going to be difficult to cope with them. He said that they would try to fit a programme to fix the problem but added the problem was exacerbated by the ten per cent increase in the cost of bitimum.
Cllr Mulherin said that there needed to be a report on the problem of potholes in the county and the cost of it to fix the roads. She said the problem was all over the county and seemed that at present the council were ‘throwing good money after bad’.
She was supported by Cllr Seamus Weir who described the state of the roads as ‘atrocious’ and asked whether the Council were putting ‘tar or sand’ in the potholes because they kept getting washed away. Cllr Weir added that there were not enough council workers on the ground to deal with the problem and asked the Council executive to consider using rural social or Fás workers.
Swinford councilllor Joe Mellett said the situation was so bad that he felt that he might cause a fatality by drivers swerving into oncoming traffic to avoid potholes. He also suggested getting addition workers to solve the problems.
“People are angry and they deserve better,” said Cllr Mellett. “If Mayo County Council are not able to deal with it they should go with Plan B and hire sub-contractors out. People want action and asking why are the Council not dealing with it.”
