Councils can now apply for a share of €4.5m extra funding to get greenways through the planning stage, the Minister for Transport has said ahead of the soon-to-be announced general election.
The funding — which was already announced in the recent budget — has come from the Carbon Tax Fund.
The funding will not fund the building of greenways straight away. It will instead enable councils to designed greenway and get them approved in the planning system. According to the Department of Transport, the funding will, for example, include supporting feasibility studies, environmental screenings and detailed design works.
Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Shane Ross said: “When I awarded €40m of funding to 10 new Greenways projects in June of this year, there were many projects around the country that unfortunately had to be left out as they were not ‘shovel ready’. Today’s announcement of an extra €4.5 from the Carbon Tax Fund for Greenways allows me to help these projects, as well as many others, to reach this stage.”
He added: “This funding will be used to help projects through the planning stage so that when the next major funding call comes, they will be in the best position to receive funding. It will also be used to support feasibility studies, environmental screenings and detailed design works. In essence it will help us to develop a pipeline of fantastic future Greenway projects that will be ready to go when funding arrives.”
Junior minister Brendan Griffin said: “I’m delighted to announce this additional funding that will see us support a number of Greenway projects around the country, I recently had the pleasure of turning the sod on the Tralee-Fenit and Limerick – Listowel sections of the Great Southern Greenway that will be completed in 2021 and this announcement today will see us progress a number of other Greenways to shovel-ready status in time for the next round of construction funding from 2022-2024. Greenways are a great enabler of rural regeneration, tourism development and health and wellbeing for all our communities and I look forward to them spreading all around the country.”
CORRECTION: The headline on this article originally said €40m extra it should have referenced €4.5m extra funding following previous funding of €40m.
Further rumblings of discontent among rural communities with this announcement. It appears that Shane Ross and his Dept. promised landowners a Code of Practice for greenway delivery, to which they would have an input, before any further movement. This Code of Practice was supposed to have been completed by November 2018. Greenways are already an extremely toxic issue west of the Shannon following Dept. of Transport /TII disastrous attempt in 2015. It is past time for the motorway specialists, TII, to be taken off this project before more damage is done to cycling infrastructure delivery in this country.