The Government is refusing to provide funding this year for maintaining greenways and active travel routes to eight cash-strapped municipal district councils, which has sparked a call to the local authority to suspend clean-up works on them.<\/p>\n
As more and more of these facilities are being built in Co Cork, municipal districts are having to divert a significant amount of money from other resources to maintain them.<\/p>\n
Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) and the National Transport Authority (NTA) provide the cost for their construction and for a small period of maintenance after they\u2019re completed. However, after that the burden falls on the municipal districts.<\/p>\n
In foot of this the council wrote to minister for transport Daragh O\u2019Brien asking him to provide the money on an annual basis for maintenance.<\/p>\n
The reply the local authority received from Mr O\u2019Brien\u2019s private secretary Amanda Corley angered several councillors from across parties.<\/p>\n
She wrote that the matter will be considered by department officials in the context of money available (to them) in 2027.<\/p>\n
Ms Corley added \u201cthe minister appreciates and agrees that the maintenance of walking and cycling routes is an important matter\u201d.<\/p>\n
The uncertainty surrounding any positive outcome to the council\u2019s request and the fact that no decision will be made until next year hasn\u2019t gone down well.<\/p>\n
The issue was first highlighted by Carrigaline-based Fine Gael councillor Una McCarthy who was not happy with the reply.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suggest if we\u2019re not getting funding we should suspend maintenance on all of them,\u201d added Cobh-based Independent councillor Ger Curley.<\/p>\n
The Cobh municipal district has the biggest section of such facilities in the county at present.<\/p>\n
Fine Gael councillor Anthony Barry, also from that district, said he can\u2019t understand how the government doesn\u2019t realise the \u201chuge drain\u201d on municipal resources trying to maintain them.<\/p>\n
Kinsale-based Independent councillor Alan Coleman said he wasn\u2019t holding out much hope as TII isn\u2019t providing enough maintenance funding for national secondary roads in the county.<\/p>\n
He described it as \u201cappalling\u201d that the government expects the council to pay.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just can\u2019t expect them to mind themselves. There has to be an effective funding stream,\u201d Mr Coleman said.<\/p>\n
Sinead Sheppard, another Fine Gael councillor based in Cobh, said the maintenance of the cycleway in Glounthaune is a major concern for locals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s getting completely overgrown and it\u2019s not fair on the residents who have to look at it on a daily basis. Our offices don\u2019t have the budget. We want to put greenways everywhere but don\u2019t have the funding for their upkeep,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government is refusing to provide funding this year for maintaining greenways and active travel routes to eight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[34580,63,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-532949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-transport","tag-cork-county-council","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}