Wexford County Council confident of receiving government funding for Enniscorthy town centre regeneration plan
Wexford PeopleFears that ambitious plans to regenerate and revive Enniscorthy will not be ready in time to receive government funding have been dismissed by a member of Wexford County Council’s special projects team. Broken into three main parts, the Enniscorthy Town Centre First Plan (TCFP) seeks to create a ‘civic spine’ in the Main Street - Market Square - Castle Hill area by constructing active travel spaces and eliminating through traffic.
The second part of the project will focus on The Castle Heritage Quarter and will again see phased pedestrianisation and pedestrian works at Castle Hill as well as upgrades to Slaney Street and Place. Lastly, the Templeshannon Hub and Link will connect that area to the town centre through pedestrian and cycle infrastructure and urban space improvements.
However, in order to carry out the TCFP the council requires funding via the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF), a government scheme which helps finance widescale developments nationally. And at the monthly meeting of the Enniscorthy Municipal District (EMD) David Whitty of the council’s special projects team said he was confident they would receive the necessary funding for all three phases of the TCFP.
“We met with URDF officials in Enniscorthy in September and we walked through all three projects with them,” he said. “They were positive about the projects and felt they were worthy of funding, and they told us that the URDF we’ve applied for is expected to be announced by the end of the year.”
But with one of the three projects currently before An Coimisíun Pleanála (ACP) for further review there was some uncertainty as to whether all would receive funding at the same time.
“The Templeshannon project has been taken over by our new senior executive architect Emma Hickey; an application has gone into ACP and she has developed a brief for a design team,” continued Mr Whitty. “With the Castle Quarter phase, investigation surveys are ongoing at the moment and we hope to bring the final design to the next meeting.”
While Mr Whitty remained upbeat about the status of all three projects, cathaoirleach of the district Councillor Barbara Anne Murphy was not so positive.
“I’m disappointed to hear the URDF is being announced now and we only have planning consent for one part of this project,” she said. “We need to be shovel ready on all the projects to get this funding, how long will it take to get approval from ACP on the Templeshannon Hub? We’re going to miss the boat on this URDF and it’s really frustrating.”
“I wish it could be progressed faster but it can’t,” replied Mr Whitty. “I expect it to be in the planning stage by the time the URDF call comes around and we’ll be in a favourable position for that, the department officials were very open to providing us with funding for Templeshannon Hub There is a significant timeline involved with any project that goes to ACP but we are in a favourable position to get that money.”