A local cycling campaign, the Navan Cycling Initiative, has said that it is a “very worrying development” that the Navan to Trim cycle route has gone unfunded so-far and is worried that it “may now not happen”.
The group said that the project was meant to be an “exemplar inter–urban route that could be replicated elsewhere throughout the country.”
A spokesperson for the group said: “Navan Cycling Initiative is very concerned with recent reports that the Pathfinder Navan to Trim Cycle Scheme has not been allocated funding. This is a very worrying development on a project which has undergone a lot of work to date and had been ‘shovel ready’.”
The group described the route as “a very exciting and high-profile project” and said it was due to start construction towards the end of 2024.
It has undergone a public consultation, preliminary and detailed design stages, and tender preparation, the group said “only for the project to not be supplied with the required funding from the Department of Transport, according to Meath County Council.”
A spokesperson for the group said: “It is inexplicable that after initially being selected for this programme in 2022, developing the route and design, and going through the consultation stages, that it will now just not be funded. The scheme attracted a lot of interest from the general public and local media, and received the full support of elected officials and local groups. How much time, resources and money have Meath County Council put into this project while other schemes have been delayed?”
“The Pathfinder Programme, first published in 2022 by the Department of Transport, was designed to encourage more active travel and play a key part in the implementation of the National Sustainable Mobility Policy and in the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in the transport sector,” they said.
Navan Cycling Initiative highlighted that the project would be a “key infrastructural project for the region in connecting two major greenways in Navan with Trim and on to the Royal Canal Greenway” and also to connect to the planned new visitor centre at Trim Castle, benefiting transport, leisure cycling and tourism.
A statement from the Navan Cycling Initiative called on the Department of Transport “to provide the required funding for this ‘shovel ready’ scheme”.
The group said that this was “outlined and agreed in the Pathfinder Programme” but the Department of Transport has previously told this website that entry into the Pathfinder programme was never linked to funding approval. Funding would need to be sourced from one of the normal funding streams.
IrishCycle.com asked the Department to comment on the issue but did not reply before publication.
But when a project was removed from the Pathfinder programme in 2023 because its expected delivery timeframe went beyond what was allowed by the programme, a spokesperson for the Department said: “In relation to funding, it has been made clear from the beginning that the Pathfinder Programme is not a funding programme. Supports for the projects selected come from within existing budget envelopes across a variety of Government funding programmes and, in most cases, Project Promoters came to the programme with funding already in place.”
As reported at the time, this tallies with what was said by the Department when the Pathfinder projects were announced in October 2022 with the Pathfinder programme described as “not a new funding stream” but rather “an initiative aimed at ensuring the projects selected are provided the impetus to deliver quickly and demonstrate what can be achieved with the right level of ambition and innovation.”
The project seems to be now lost between funding streams, with the National Transport Authority funding re-focused on larger urban projects and Transport Infrastructure Ireland not having a clear, larger-scale funding stream for this type of project when not on the national road network.
