Mayo 'does not get enough' in roads funding

County Mayo has one of the largest road networks in Ireland but not enough funding to maintain it, a senior council official has admitted. 

The scale of the task was highlighted to members of Westport-Belmullet Municipal District at their December meeting as they raised various issues around roadworks, local improvement schemes (LIS), coastal erosion, potholes and maintenance jobs needing to be done around the district.

During a presentation, Mayo Co Council's Head of Roads Conrad Harley, who took up his post last April, said Mayo is "not getting anywhere near the amount of money that would be needed to do all the jobs and that is how it has been for years". 

"Bringing the required money to the required places is the most difficult part of my job and means that 80% of the people are going to be unhappy.

“In the four municipal districts, everyone has their own list of schemes and to work through this is going to take time. When looking for capital funding, there is a process you go through and it takes time to go through all the steps, but when you do, you do get the big money."

Mr Harley said all the regional roads in Mayo need strengthening.

“While it may be frustrating, I think we need to work through the process to weed out some projects and come up with an extensive list to pick the most strategic bits under the Regional Roads Infrastructure Programme, because not every regional road can get large capital funding.” 

Mr Harley added that LIS are the most difficult of all the roads funding programmes to operate. These generally relate to short distances of road up to 10km or 20km. 

“You have a very good history in this municipal district on LIS delivery, and we are looking at how we can improve the LIS scheme in general to maximise our funding. We will try and bring that back to you in the new year, so that issues such as where a road project falls through, that the funding secured goes back into the pot.” 

Mr Harley told councillors that the details on next year’s road funding allocations would not be available until January: “Once they come, we will have a better idea then of where money will be spent.”

• Published as part of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.