Controversial laneway scheme gets council approval

Despite fierce opposition from sections of the chamber, the Fine Gael members of Cavan County Council successfully forced through a controversial scheme that will see €260,000 diverted from general maintenance in the annual roads budget to instead repair a handful of private laneways.

Voted through by a majority of 12 attending Fine Gael councillors to just seven Fianna Fáil, with the four Sinn Féin members including newly co-opted Noel Connell, abstaining, the change will come into effect as the local authority looks to roll out its road works programme for the year ahead.
Debate on the reallocation has raged behind the scenes since the Fine Gael grouping first made the proposal in-committee ahead of the annual budget meeting last month. The fall-out of that subsequently led to the dramatic walkout en masse of Fianna Fáil from the public meeting, and there was no let up in the animosity when the parties met again this week, Monday, February 11.
An effective reinstatement of the Local Improvement Scheme, which was scrapped by the current government, initially the Fine Gael party had sought to have €400,000, €100,000 from each of the county electoral areas taken from the council’s public road budget under ' Discretionary Maintenance Grant’ and put into a scheme for mending private lanes.

Over 100 lanes on council waiting list
However, at Monday’s meeting that figure was cut to €260,000, or €65,000 from the budget allocated to each area, with Director of Services for Infrastructure Joe McLoughlin saying the money made available would cover the cost of fixing a maximum of seven to eight private lanes. There are currently 110 lanes on the council list, though he expected this to increase once the LIS came back on stream.
While telling the meeting that 2013 represented one of the “most successful years” the council has had regarding infrastructural investment with the N3 Bypass, Cavan Relief Road and other projects coming to fruition, he warned that the council was working with an ever reduced budget.
Compared to 2009 when the roads budget was €17m, that has now been slashed by 49% to just over €8.9m, and he said this was likely to reduce again next year.

'The wrong move’ - Smith
The opening salvo came from Fianna Fáil’s Sean Smith who simply said the reinstatement of the LIS scheme with money from Council coffers, whereas it has been previously funded by central government was “the wrong move at the wrong time”.
Fellow party member John Paul Feeley supported Cllr Smith’s comments, and while in support of LIS in general, he did not feel it was “appropriate” for it to be enacted where other services would suffer.
“The budget we have is already insufficient for the amount of work we want to get done. What I see will happen now is less money for road surfacing, less money for road maintenance and less money for road sweeping. Basically, more pot-holes!”
Danny Brady, who laid claim to having more laneways in his area than anywhere else in the county, said he was thankful he would not be a member of the council post May the way things were going.
“How do you defend this allocation? It’s impossible to understand. I’d hate to be here in 12 months. Thank God I’m not. Not only will there be no local roads left, but there’ll be no county roads either.”
Sinn Féin’s Charlie Boylan, speaking for his party grouping, said there had been “enough debate” on the matter, and while it was not the perfect solution, it was now February and the roads budget was not yet finalised. He asked the council executive, however, if it were possible, to seek extra funding from government to support a full scheme in the future. The response in defence from Fine Gael was just as vigorous.
Sean McKiernan stated that politics was about decision making, and his party had been courageous it its proposal, while Winston Bennett said that the people living on laneways around the county had as much right to road maintenance as people living anywhere else in the county.
Cllr John O’Hare meanwhile said while there was never “enough money” for all the work that needed to be done, Fine Gael had sought to implement a “fair” budget for all citizens of the county.