New road maintenance scheme asks local communities for contribution

Details of a €10.6 million works on local roads in a pilot scheme that involves asking for funding contributions from communities in certain areas has been announced by Government reports the Journal.

Making the announcement today, Minister of State Alan Kelly said the ‘Community Involvement Scheme’ (CIS) will see lesser rural roads now benefitting from ‘direct community input’.

Work will be undertaken at 377 locations and over 240km of roads will be improved under the new scheme. The voluntary scheme involves funding of €10.6 million to be provided by the government over two years in 2013 and 2014, though the total cost of the maintenance will be €14 million.

In order to come up with the rest of the money, local authorities have asked communities to contribute a proportion of the cost either through funding, labour provision, mahinery or other forms of benefit.

“This funding is then being added to my department’s spend to prioritise maintenance in rural isolated areas and will allow communities have a direct input along with their local authority into local road maintenance,” Kelly said today.

“In the normal course of a County Council’s road works programme, repairs to minor county roads would only be considered towards the end of the programme after more heavily trafficked routes had been dealt with and the purpose of this pilot community involvement scheme is to permit local participation in the repair of roads.” Source: The Jounal.