Minister Slammed For Failing To Invest More In Road Infrastructure

Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein have slammed Transport Minister Shane Ross for failing to invest in road infrastructure throughout Ireland.

He has been accused of ignoring the state of the roads in Edenderry and Fingal, as well as failing to provide additional funding to allow the Edenderry Inner Relief Road project to proceed.

Fianna Fáil TD for Offaly Barry Cowen TD said securing the project is "vital".

He said: "Offaly County Council have made an application for €1m funding to go towards the scheme. This funding application has been left on the shelf by Minister Ross to the detriment of the people of Edenderry. It clearly shows that this Government isn’t interested in the urgent needs of Offaly.


"It's equally disappointing that no additional one off funding was provided under the latest road allocations to repair the enormous damage that has been caused to Offalys roads over the winter period. 40% of roads in Offaly are built on peat and are susceptible to rapid erosion. No solution has been put forward by the Government to deal with this."

Sinn Féin Fingal TD Louise O'Reilly also said investment is urgently needed in the rural road network in Fingal.

She said: "I reminded the Minister that Fingal has over 1000km of local roads and, while we are only up the road from the Dáil, we might as well be on the moon for all the notice we are given by this government.

"I will continue to work with our local councillors to keep the sustainable development of Fingal on the national agenda because areas like St Margaret's, Naul, Ballyboghal and Oldtown need to be serviced by a decent road network and this network must be appropriately maintained. Local roads in Fingal have been ignored by the Department of Transport when they made the local road grant allocations and this is not consistent with the need to sustainably develop North County Dublin."

(CD/LM)