Mayo County Councillor, Cllr Annie May Reape has expressed her dismay at the recent Government decision to discontinue its support of the local authority administered Local Improvement Scheme.
The decision was announced in the detail of the Minister for Finance’s Budget speech earlier this month.
Cllr Reape stated: “This scheme was particularly useful and was very well used by the local authority in the last number of years.”
“Under the LIS recipients of the grant paid a local contribution of between 10 and 15 per cent of the cost of any particular job. This was a very useful and practical way of getting minor and in some cases major repair work carried out on local roads.
“For example in 2011 a total of 70 schemes were carried out by Mayo County Council, with over 50 kilometres of road being repaired in the process.
“Between 2005 and 2011 a total of €16 million was made available to the Local Improvement Scheme and for this to abruptly disappear without warning is going to cause huge problems for the local authority going forward, because we must remember too that current expenditure for local and regional roads is also going to be significantly reduced,” warned Cllr Reape.
“I am now calling upon the four Government TDs in this county, including An Taoiseach, to make strong representations to Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar on behalf of rural communities in County Mayo because this is yet another cut that affects rural communities only.
“Surely Minister Varadkar could find a fairer, more balanced way of cutting €4.5 million from his transport budget in 2012, than simply abolishing a scheme that has provided huge support to rural dwellers throughout the country, and not just County Mayo,” contended Cllr Reape.
