€1m spent on West Cork fire station that wasn’t built

Nearly €1m of taxpayers’ money was wasted on acquiring land in Co Cork for a fire station which was never built.

The revelation comes less than a month after Cork County Council and the Department of Environment admitted it had spent €1m on plans for a 100-house development at Dararra, near Clonakilty.

That plan, which evolved in 2006, was later scrapped and it then emerged that the council never got the title deeds to the land earmarked for the project.

The land remains in the possession of the local agricultural college.

Now concerns have been raised about the cost of acquiring land for a fire station in Kanturk, which was never built.

In reply to a Dáil question from Sinn Féin, Environment Minister Phil Hogan said in 2007, Cork County Council lodged proposals under the Fire Service Capital Programme to build a new two-bay fire station in Kanturk.

The FF/PD government then gave the go-ahead for the council to prepare detailed design and tender documents for the project.

Mr Hogan said the department wrote to the council the following year expressing concern at the site acquisition costs and their implication for the total project cost. It suggested other potential sites in Kanturk should be considered.

But by this time, the council was already locked into the acquisition of the site and was forced to go to arbitration where a figure was finally agreed with the landowner.

By the time that process was over, the recession began to bite and money for such building projects was severely curtailed.

Mr Hogan said Kanturk would now have to take it place on a national priority list, adding that there were still constraints on the Fire Service Capital Programme.

A spokesman for Cork County Council said “the cost of this acquisition was determined by arbitration at €705,000.”

However, Melissa Mullane, a Sinn Féin town councillor in Mallow, maintains that additional costs associated with project design would have brought the total cost to more than €900,000.

“The people of Kanturk were promised a new fire station in 2007 to much fanfare by the then minister Batt O’Keeffe. This commitment was never delivered upon despite the fact that the minister said at the time that the station was in bad need of replacement.

“The reality is after seven years the need for a new station remains, but the chances of getting it in the near future are remote.

“Again this highlights the waste and mismanagement of the public purse under Fianna Fáil’s reign.”