Rural residents face paying 50% of road repair costs

The Government has been accused “of giving the two fingers” to people who live alongside publicly owned rural cul-de-sacs in Co Cork who will now have to pay double to get them repaired.

They pay car tax, household charges and development contributions, but councillors say these people are getting a “very raw deal” because they’re now being asked to pay 50% of the cost of repairing the road.

The Government has decided to increase local residents’ contributions for community road improvement schemes (CIS) from 25% to 50%.

It’s been branded “a disgrace” by councillors and county manager Martin Riordan believes the hike will make the scheme unworkable. The CIS mainly covers repairs to rural cul-de-sacs, some of which can be over a mile long.

“Any local (council) engineer will tell you it’s not going to work at 50%. We should be trying to encourage rather than discourage such schemes,” Mr Riordan said.

To make matters worse, the council traditionally earmarked 7.5% of its roads grant for such schemes, but that money has now been taken off it and will be administered by central government.

Mr Riordan said CIS improvements instilled a great sense of cooperation between the council and rural communities and it was a bond he didn’t want to lose.

Cllr John Paul O’Shea (Ind) said the scheme had been a huge success in North Cork, especially near his home in Lombardstown.

“We used to find it hard to get a 25% contribution, but now the reality is such roads will not be upgraded now. The reality is some of these rural roads will be forgotten about,” he said.

Fellow councillors have decided to write to the Government urging it to backtrack.

Cllr Kevin O’Keeffe (FF) accused the Government of “giving the two-fingers to rural Ireland. It’s an absolute disgrace.”

He told his FG and Lab colleagues on the council to ensure their respective ministers did a U-turn on the decision to increase the local contribution.

“After paying car tax and household charges these people are now being asked to pay half the price of the road upgrade. It’s completely unreasonable,” Cllr Andrias Moynihan (FF) said.

Even some FG councillors agreed the contribution increase was over the top.

Cllr Dermot Sheehan said that Cork was one-eighth of the national landmass and thus had a large amount of such roads.

“This will only add to the problem of rural isolation,” he said.