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No joy for funds-starved Shannon

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SHANNON still needs more funding to get its infrastructure to the right standard and more money should have been allocated to Clare County Council after it took over the town in 2004.

These were some of the views expressed by Shannon town councillors this week, after the local authority received a letter from Minister Leo Varadkar ruling out a special grant for footpath repairs for the coming year.
The minister was responding to a previous letter from the council on the matter, written in relation to funding under the footpath maintenance grant scheme for former town commissioners.
In his reply, Minister Varadkar stated, “Firstly, I would like to explain that the improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads in its area is a statutory function of each road authority, in accordance with the provisions of Section 13 of the Roads Act 1993. Works on such roads are a matter for the relevant local authority to be funded from its own resources, supplemented by State road grants.
“The 2012 figures for maintenance work on regional and local roads now indicate a significant reduction on the 2011 allocation over the next number of years. This means allocations under all grant headings have had to be reviewed, as the cut will have a significant impact on the maintenance of the regional and local road network.”
“As part of continuing reductions in available funding, it is not anticipated that an allocation for special block grants for footpath repairs will be made in 2012.”
Councillor Gerry Flynn said the situation regarding Shannon needs to be explained to Mr Varadkar. “It would be remiss of us – and he is a new minister – if we didn’t advise him of the situation where the local authority took over Shannon.We should remind him at the time that no funding was given to the local authority to take over one of the biggest land banks in the State.”
Councillor Flynn said if more money is provided it would enable the completion of works that have been going on for a few years. “The town needs some funding and a special case should be made,” he added.
Independent councillor, Patricia McCarthy said it is hard to understand the total elimination of the grant and a cut would have been easier to accept. She went on to say that the scale of works in Shannon is exceptional.
Labour party councillor, Tony McMahon said the decision is “very disappointing”. He questioned whether Clare County Council has ever sought or received any funding for the takeover and was told around €76,000 was received from Shannon Development at the time.

 

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