County Engineer Joe Beirne warned the elected members of Mayo County Council that the there could be a scale back on the roadworks budget that was agreed by the council at their budget meeting. Beirne told the members that the council received a letter from the Department of Transport on February 26 which outlined that “The department is compiling data on existing contractual legal commitments on foot of regional and local road grants allocated to your authority, and potential new commitments to be entered into in 2009”. It went on to say that “New contractual commitments will now require prior approval by the Department of Finance. Accordingly, pending completion of the data by the department and securing the necessary Department of Finance sanction, no further contractual commitments on foot of regional and local road grants may be entered into by your authority”.
Beirne went on to the tell the members: “We don’t exactly know what this means. We put this item on the agenda so you would be aware of it. There could be a withdrawing of funding by the department and if there is it could have a knock on effect on schemes and projects.”
The roads budget in Mayo has already seen a number of cutbacks on 2008 levels with a 27 per cent reduction in the allocation for national secondary roads and 22 per cent reduction on local roads for 2009.
