Cork needs extra €36m to repair roads severely damaged by winter storms
The county’s road network suffered severe and extensive damage last winter, and especially during last October’s Storm Babet, with extensive damage to its network of local and regionals roads and to bridge infrastructure, with repairs estimated at some €56m.
Cork still needs at least another €36m to repair the county’s storm-damaged roads despite a major funding announcement on Friday.
Transport Minister Eamon Ryan and Minister of State Jack Chambers announced a national €30m emergency funding package for local and regional roads to deal specifically with the impact of climate change, which they said had contributed to a deterioration in the surface quality of certain parts of the network over the winter months.
They said the funding would help address the worst impacted areas of the road network following recent severe weather.
Cork County Council is in line for the largest slice of the funding, with just over €3.7m allocated.
The county’s road network suffered severe and extensive damage last winter, and especially during last October’s Storm Babet severe weather event, with extensive damage to its network of local and regionals roads and to bridge infrastructure, with repairs estimated at some €56m.
Most of the damage occurred in East Cork where repairs are still under way and where some roads are still closed.
About €10m has already been allocated to fund the repairs and Friday’s announcement adds another €3.7m.
But council sources said while this latest additional funding was welcome, it was still nowhere near what is required to fund the vast amount of repair work required.
"The scale of damage was unprecedented, both in terms of the damage that was caused to the roads themselves, and the sheer extent of it — it was county-wide, but particularly acute in East Cork," one well-placed source said.
Mr Ryan said keeping the country’s road network safe was a priority for him and this Government.
“Climate change, like the prolonged rain we saw this past winter and spring, has a damaging impact on our road surfaces which has to be addressed quickly so that it does not lead to further deterioration," he said.
“Through this additional funding local authorities can begin to restore the impacted regional and local road network, along with building resilience into the network in an ever-changing environment.”
Mr Chambers, who recently met a delegation from Cork County Council to discuss the roads repairs issues, said prompt restoration of the impacted road network was essential from a safety perspective as well as maintaining key social and economic connections.
“For equity, this additional funding is to be distributed among local authorities based on road lengths per region as extreme rain affected areas throughout the country,” he said.
The Dublin local authorities self-fund road maintenance and improvement works from the receipt of local property taxes, and so have not been allocated funding under this scheme.
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