Roads damage bill tops €11 million

CLARE County Council’s final estimate for the recent weather damage caused to large parts of the county’s road network tops €11 million.
Describing the repair bill as “enormous”, Mayor of Clare Councillor Tony Mulcahy has called for a council deputation to meet with Minister Noel Dempsey and present a case for additional funding.
“There is no point in sitting back and saying we have no money to repair roads in Clare. If the council doesn’t have the money to do a proper job, roads could become irreparable and it could cost three times as much to restore them to their original condition.
“The scale of the damage to the county road network is massive. There is no point in just filling potholes because the road will be as bad as ever in a few months time,” he noted.
Clare County Council has costed the repair bill as follows: national roads flood damage €630,000; non-national flood damage €2,352,000; national roads frost damage €1,022,000 and non-national roads frost damage €7,084,000, totalling €11.088m.
Senior executive roads engineer, Tom Tiernan, revealed the total contribution from the council’s own resources and the National Roads Authority for the 2010 Roadworks Programme is €7m. The Department of the Environment is expected to announce what will be allocated to Clare County Council within the next week or so.
Government cutbacks resulted in a 30% drop in the overall package for maintenance and improvement works on the county’s roads from €31m in 2008 to €22m in 2009.
The fact the total repair bill is half the overall allocation for 2009 illustrates the mammoth task facing the council to maintain roads to an acceptable level, while at the same time restoring the damaged ones to an acceptable state.
Mr Tiernan said most of the road damage caused by the flooding is in North Clare, Ennis and South-East Clare. However, he pointed out severe sub zero temperatures had resulted in a huge amount of damage across all categories of roads throughout the county.