‘We can only work with the funding we get’

“THERE ARE some local representatives who would go on radio and welcome the opening of an empty envelope,” declared SF councillor Seán Conlon at the July meeting of Monaghan County Council.

He was criticising the welcome voiced by Government party politicians at national and local level for a €900,000 allocation to the Council for the repair of roads damaged in January’s Storm Chandra severe weather event.

He pointed out that the council had applied to the Department for €1.4M to cover the cost of addressing the storm’s impact on local roads.

Some members were preoccupied with how the €900,000 is going to be spent- Cllr Richard Truell (FG) asking if it will be used to surface roads or deal with flooding.

Cllr Noel Keelan (SF) wanted to know if it will be spent in the Carrickmacross-Castleblayney Municipal District area where they are over €1.5M short of the money needed for road maintenance and restoration and would be unable to complete the scheduled roads programme were it not for the good management of the MD roads team.

“We need multiples of that money,” Cllr Keelan declared. “This is the worst roads situation we have been in during my time on the council. The roads people are driving on are not acceptable.”

Cllr Keelan proposed the council renew its request for a meeting with Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien.

Chief Executive Robert Burns said he expected the €900,000 to be spent mainly in the Carrickmacross-Castleblayney and Clones-Ballybay MDs where the storm damage was concentrated.

Cllr Sinéad Flynn (SF) pointed out that the local authority is left with a shortfall of around €500,000 to fix the storm-damaged roads and asked if this will be taken from the council’s existing roads budget, delaying some scheduled maintenance and improvement works.

IMPACT

“We need a roads funding model that recognises the true cost of severe weather events,” Cllr Flynn stated. “We shouldn’t be expected to carry the cost of what are becoming more frequent occurrences. We need to build resilience into our road network, not just patch up the damage.”

Cllr P J O’Hanlon (FF) said the Department funding model is “broken” and makes no allowance for local roads. “If we get the whole €900,000 in Carrickmacross-Castleblayney, we will still be €900,000 short. Our MD has 24% of the most severely damaged roads in the county but the Monaghan MD is getting more than us for roads this year. We were told we will be looked after in 2027 – that is not the way to do business," he lambasted.

Sinn Fein's Colm Carthy said it is important for a Council delegation to meet directly with the Minister so he got the facts in relation to the problems Monaghan is facing. He described the €1.4M sought for Storm Chandra damage as an accurate reflection, not just a notional figure.

Cllr Peter Conlon (FG) agreed that the funding model for local roads isn’t working.

Cllr Seamus Treanor (Ind) said that, in Monaghan, a carpark issue had to be addressed by the MD voting to take €100,000 from its General Municipal Allocation. “The roads are not good in north Monaghan either,” he told Cllr O’Hanlon.

Stating that he understood members’ frustrations, the Mr Burns said the Council recently agreed a new road management strategy predicated on being more efficient through using new technologies.

“But we are not magicians,” he added, “and we can only work with the funding we get.”

He thought the new strategy gives the Council the best chance of getting additional funding and they already obtained an extra €1M this year because of it. The Council also put €6M of its own resources into the roads budget.

“It will take €33M to bring all our roads up to a rating that moves them out of the ‘poor’ category. We are not even running to stand still – it is a challenge and I have raised this with Oireachtas members.”

Cllr O’Hanlon claimed the debate’s last words, declaring: “I would normally be defending FF to the hilt, but what is happening in relation to roads is so wrong.”