Deciding funding by length of road labelled as unfair by councillors in Tipperary

Tipperary County Council recently held their monthly meeting in Nenagh on October 13.

At this meeting councillors discussed the outcomes of a recent Strategic Policy Committees (SPC) meeting held by members, regarding local roads policy.

Fine Gael Cllr Tom Acheson told the meeting that he felt the way in which funding is allocated for roads in the district was unfair.

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“Clonmel district, of all the districts, without any disrespect to any other district, provides a huge amount of funding between car parking fees and rates to the county council.

“Yet our allocation for that scheme is extremely small. It’s a very crude way of doing it and I don’t think we get a fair cut, that’s all,” said the Cllr.

“I think the allocation to Clonmel district is not great,” he concluded.

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Fianna Fáil councillor Siobhan Ambrose agreed with Cllr Acheson. “They decide the funding by length of road and that’s why we have a shortfall but if we were to look at the districts and divide up funding according to the revenues raised in each district, it would paint a different picture. I think it is unfair and I think it needs to be reviewed,” she said.

Independent councillor Liam Browne disagreed with the two Clonmel councillors comments, saying he found the comments disappointing. “People up in the Glen of Aherlow are fully as deserving of roads as people in Clonmel.

“We need to stay away from the idea that because we’re the big economic driver in the county, we need to get the money for ourselves.

“We should be spreading it out and making sure that the wealth is shared, so that we can build up all areas,” said Cllr Browne.
Independent councillor Pat English said that there is a justification for looking at the parking charges in relation to funding allocations again, as Clonmel pays half the parking charges for the county.

“There is a need for the town to get additional funding, as the capital town of the county,” said Cllr English.

Cllr Ambrose told the meeting that her previous point only referred to the manner of how the money was being divided up, and said that it needed to be reviewed.

Cllr Máirín McGrath said that while she welcomed the policy changes that came from the meeting, she had one reservation.
“The through roads that are in a bad state have to wait until 2028 to be considered, I think we should allow them to go through the red roads programme because there are tertiary through roads in our districts that are in an appalling state and can’t wait until 2028.

Sinn Féin councillor David Dunne agreed with Cllr McGrath’s statements “Roads can’t wait until 2028,” he said.

Responding to the councillors queries, Kieran Malone who is the acting senior engineer for Tipperary County Council said “Our overall allocation that we receive from the department, is split between all of the local authorities, on the amount of roads we have to deal with.

“Essentially funding received is split between the amount of km each local authority has to deal with.

“We follow a similar process in our own county, we look at the roads in each municipal district and split the money accordingly,” said Mr Malone.

“The fairest way of doing it is based on the amount of road that each district has to treat,” he explained.