A number of elected members of the Claremorris Municipal District expressed their disappointment this week at how €440,000 in top-up funding for road works projects in the area was decided to be spent. Fianna Fáil Cllr Damien Ryan told the Mayo Advertiser yesterday: "Bar a very small corner near Claremorris, none of the money came to projects in the part of the district that is now part of the new Galway-West constituency for the General Election."
When asked if he thought there were political motives behind the way the money was allocated he replied: "We're in the run-up to an election and anything is possible. All governments could be guilty of this, but what my main problem is that when the supplementry funding comes down, we should have had time to make representations and submissions. With municipal districts being formed, we have to make sure that going on, there is a second list of priorities from the area if top-up funding comes down in future."
Cllr Ryan went on to say: "I have no problem if extra funding comes from the Department and they have it earmarked for a specific project. It's just the way that this was handled. We've to make sure in the future we have our priorities listed as a district and it's worked off from there, if extra funding comes on stream."
Cllr Ryan had raised the issue at the September meeting of the Claremorris Municipal District on Wednesday. He outlined that a circular was sent from the Department of Transport on July 17 this year, outlining an extra allocation of €1,579,500 for the county, with €440,000 of that going to the Claremorris area. The department had asked that schemes that were to be carried out using this funding would be back with them by August 14 for approval. Cllr Ryan asked why wasn't there a meeting called of the councillors and the council executives from the area to select what would be done. He was supported in this by Independent Cllr Richard Finn who said: "I have to express my dissatisfaction in relation to it. If the department comes with an allocation of money and they want to earmark the allocation I have no problem with that, but not let them send down money to Mayo County Council and then come along when the money is being distributed to different jobs and we don't have a say in where or what it goes to."
Fine Gael Cllr Patsy O'Brien responded to the questions being asked by saying: "I've no apology to make here today, that I did make representations for more money for Mayo and I did make representations to the Minister, I have no problem saying that at all, because since 2009 to date in this area we have lost out by 45 per cent in roads funding as to what we were getting. Any rural based councillor would know that we need more money, I have no problem making representations as you all do and I want to state I'm delighted that it came, the only thing I'm sorry about is that it's not 5.5 million.
"I made representations on the whole, I don't know what happened in relation to it, I made representations, I don't know what's come and I don't care because it's more money we needed. I made representations to Minister Ring and I'm delighted he gave the money he did."
His fellow Fine Gael Cllr John Cribben added: "Any money that comes in should be welcomed. All I heard was this called out on the radio and inside five minutes I rang my local overseer and told him there was a road in my catchment area that I was under severe pressure to try to get it done, and he went out the next morning, estimated the cost and there was €30,000 allocated to that."
The third Fine Gael councillor in the district, Cllr Tom Connelly, said: "I did make representations and I've no problem saying that on issues that had to be fixed and were needed to be done for years, I've no apologies to make about it at all."
