The Department of the Environment has told Kilkenny County Council that it will fund the designated ‘urgent’ water projects outlined by the council in full until the council can afford to pay its share of the funding.
The percentage due to be paid by the council will be deemed as a long-term, interest free loan, which will see the council borrowing €1.4m in 2010 and that figure will increase to €3m by 2015.
Some members of the council were not satisfied that the government had not agreed to fund the entire projects when the council had not the funds to do so.
Some €218m has been identified as the budget required if the most urgent works on water services are to be undertaken in Kilkenny.
Speaking this week at a meeting of Kilkenny County Council, the county manager Joe Crockett outlined the serious situation facing the council this year in terms of funding for water services.
“We have carried out a needs assessment on all the projects on our list and we have prioritised all the different needs and focussed on environmental and public health impact,” he explained.
“Because the development levies have turned out to be completely inadequate, we have had to prioritise projects into most urgent works and these projects alone require €56m and that is just to avoid paying fines to Europe. We have calculated that we would need to borrow in the region of €8.1m on top of the €8.5m borrowed last year. So the offer from the department to pay for the projects outlined in the short -term is one we really should take up on,” he said.
The council has prioritised five projects on the Remedial Action List Scheme to be addressed urgently and they include, Gowran/Goresbridge/ Paulstown water; Inistioge water; Kilkenny city regional water; Mooncoin regional water and water conservation.
There are also several other projects which Mr Crockett deemed to be important and he told the members that discussion on these projects should be deferred until September.
“If we look at these in September, there may be new developments or new funding that would enable us to proceed with these and we can also consider these at budget time,” he said.
The deferral of funding was greeted with mixed views from the members, many of whom believed that the government should fund the entire projects with no obligation on the council to repay the loans.
“Funding should be given and not just loaned, We need 100 per cent funding but unfortunately we were too late in getting on the band wagon — other counties have had their entire projects paid for so why shouldn’t we,” asked Cllr Pat O’ Neill.
Cllr Matt Doran expressed his concern about borrowing.
“I’m worried about down the line — should we maybe build up a reserve fund for the future,” he asked.
Meanwhile, Cllr Tom Maher welcomed the deferral and said there is no chance of us being able to fund these water/sewerage projects ourselves so if we are to meet our EU commitments, the government will need to fund it.”
Cllr Millea pointed out, “the fines to Europe will far out-weigh the cost of some of these schemes.”
Mr Crockett said that water is the most serious issue facing the council.
“We are not a master of our own destiny in regard to which schemes can go ahead and which can’t. National authorities are now determining this. If the government is giving us a soft landing for now we should take it and welcome it as a tool to deal with our deficit issues.”
