Tipperary’s roads are ‘falling apart’ as local representatives demand more Government funding
Tipperary’s roads are “falling apart” according to local representatives, who have called for more funding from the Government for road projects across the county.
Councillors in the Nenagh Municipal District (MD) have hit out at the Government over the local authority’s inability to carry out projects on roads across the county due to not having enough funding to do so.
At the November meeting of the Nenagh MD, Labour Party councillor Fiona Bonfield said that Tipperary County Council simply needs more money for roads.
"I’m sick and tired of raising roads at this stage, unfortunately, we’re not getting the money, and it’s simple as that,” she said.
"The message has to go back up to Dublin and to the Oireachtas members that our road network in Tipperary is falling apart, and it’s falling apart because we don’t have enough money to do roads,” Cllr Bonfield said.
"We can go on here and list every road in the county but unless we get more money from Government for roads, it’s going to get worse,” she added.
Paying tribute to the council’s outdoor and roads staff, Cllr Bonfield said that the council’s staff do as much as they can with the resources they have.
"The message is we don’t have the money to do what needs to be done, and Government need to wake up and start giving money to roads, otherwise people are not going to be able to travel to work,” she hit out.
Agreeing with his council colleague, independent councillor Joe Hannigan that the money allocated to Tipperary by central government doesn’t seem to be as much as other counties.
"We don’t seem to be getting the funding, there’s something not right about it, it just doesn’t add up for me,” he explained.
"The TDs that we have in the Dáil should be pulled in here and see can we get them to get more money for us,” Cllr Hannigan added.
Independent councillor Seamie Morris added that the local authority is less able to get works done now that they used to before.
"We seem to be reactive rather than proactive.
"We don’t seem to have enough staff, we don’t have the outdoor staff to do the work that needs to be done,” Cllr Morris said.
"We don’t seem to have the staff to do the work, we don’t seem to have the money to do the work, but we seem to have money for everything else,” he added.
Director of services for roads Liam Brett said that any increases in roads funding that has been passed down, has been taken up with construction inflation.
“To get more done, we need more resources, it’s as simple as that, the reality is, since 2021, roads construction inflation is running at about 35pc. We’ve had marginal increases in some budgets, but any increases we’ve had have been in single-digit figures.
"Inflation has reduced our ability to get works done by somewhere in the region of 30pc in real terms,” Mr Brett said.
"So we do need increases in allocations from Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), and from the Department of Transport, but we also need an increase in funding from the local authority’s own resources,” Mr Brett added.