‘Healy-Raes had no trouble getting funding’

A GOVERNMENT announcement of a €3.7m supplementary fund for regional and local road repairs was ridiculed by members of the West Cork Municipal District.

‘It wouldn’t fill the potholes,’ said Cllr Joe Carroll (FF), who asked how much of that funding West Cork is likely to see, considering the flood devastation caused in Midleton.

He commented on a recent trip by a delegation to Dublin, which highlighted the fact that Cork County had lost out of €273m in funding since cutbacks were first made to the national, regional and local roads programmes in 2007.

‘West Cork councillors are getting it in the neck,’ said Cllr Carroll.

‘We are being told that the Healy-Raes had no trouble getting substantially more funding for the road network in Kerry.

‘Go through the tunnel at Caha and you are in a different world all together is what we are being told,’ said the Fianna Fáil councillor.

‘Millions are being pumped into the roads in Kerry,’ Cllr Declan Hurley (Ind) concurred. ‘Where do you start with €3.7m – it’s peanuts,’ said Cllr Hurley, who agreed with Cllr Carroll’s suggestion that they should write to the minister for finance and the minister for public expenditure to seek another meeting to highlight Cork County’s desperate need for road repairs.

Cllr Caroline Cronin (FG) agreed that Cork County is totally under-funded. ‘It is mortifying driving up to some houses given the condition of the potholes,’ she added.