Offaly County Council's road funding is now twice recessionary figure

There was good news for Offaly's roads during a recent meeting of Offaly County Council.

Tom Shanahan, Director of Services for Climate Action, Environment, Water and Transportation, told the Councillors that there's a big increase in roads funding in this year's budget.

“Our roads allocation this year is 26.4 million Euro,” he stated, “which is an extra 2.5 million Euro over last year and is double what it was several years ago during the recessionary period.”

He said a good deal of the funding, 2.2 million Euro, is going towards the proposed Edenderry inner link road.

Edenderry's inner link road will enable traffic coming from the Dublin Road (R402) to access the north side of Edenderry without having to use the severely congested main JKL street. It can often take half-an-hour to cross the town because of the traffic congestion.

Mr Shanahan added that, of the remaining extra funding, 800,000 Euros is going to the peat road pilot project, and 75,000 Euro is going towards the Birr Distributor Road.

The Birr Distributor Road will provide some much-needed traffic relief in the town. It will run from Lidl on the Tullamore Road for 380 metres across to the Banagher Road, and will be seven metres in width. It will give vehicles the option of avoiding driving through the town, which can get very congested.

“Overall this year's roads programme is very positive,” commented the Director of Services. “However, we are worried about the costs which are likely to increase for certain things which are part of road works, such as stone, the cutting of stone, the fuel involved in the works. As a result of rising costs, some works might have to be curtailed. There's also a problem with a lack of contractors. The construction industry, as we all know, is in difficulties at the moment.”

He added that the Council is making efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of road works.

Cllr Danny Owens said the Community Involvement Scheme (CIS) needs more funding. He said the CIS is an invaluable scheme which allows local communities to get involved in the upgrading of minor roads. The residents pay 15% of the total cost of the scheme. Cllr Owens said it was disappointing that the funding given to the Council for the CIS has been reduced by 50% this year.

Cllr John Carroll talked about the dark skies initiative which aims to keep the light of street lighting shining downwards as much as possible rather than upwards.

He also said that it was great to hear of the 75,000 Euro that has been allocated for the distributor road in Birr. He added that remedial works are needed to tackle the problem of dangerous speeding at Boolinarrig near Birr. Boolinarrig is on the N62 road to Cloghan, and is a kilometre from Kennedy's Cross (the N62 / N52 junction road near Birr).

Cllr Ken Smollen said the Council needs to back the construction of speed ramps. “Other counties are much more positive about erecting speed ramps than we are. Time and again ramps have proven to be successful in other counties. We have a big problem with speeding cars and motorbikes in urban areas and we need to do more to tackle it.”

Cllr Liam Quinn commented that while the extra funding is very welcome the county's road network needs a lot more investment. “The ratings of some of the roads are quite poor,” he pointed out.

In other business, Cllr Noel Cribbin pointed out that the Council's lighting system wasn't being as well looked after. “Up to about six months ago,” he remarked, “the company handling the lights was great, now it could take months for them to turn up and deal with the problem.”