"Making a mountain out of a molehill"- councillor questions greenway process

A Tipperary councillor voiced frustration over the tangled web of bureaucracy surrounding greenway project funding, insisting the process needs to be streamlined.

Independent councillor Máirín McGrath highlighted these concerns at the March Tipperary County Council meeting. She passionately presented her motion to address the issue.

Cllr McGrath’s motion asked the council to contact the Department of Transport and Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII). She wants to push for an easier funding process for greenway and blueway projects. She also called for local authorities to have more say over routes and designs.

During the meeting, Cllr McGrath described the current process as overly complicated, pointing to the proposed greenway linking Cahir and Cashel along the Old Dublin Road as a prime example.

"The policy that we have to follow to unlock the funding from the TII and the Department of Transport is, in my opinion, making a mountain out of a molehill,” Cllr McGrath said.

"We’re currently at the second round of public consultation, and that’s always vital; however, we’ve had to open a wide study area and design five route options through many private landholdings, when this was never the intention.

"This is causing unnecessary stress to landowners who are anxious at the notion of their land being in a proposed blue or greenway, but this is being done just so we can tick a box to satisfy the policy, despite there being an obvious and preferred route,” she explained.

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The proposed greenway would link Cahir and Cashel with a scenic walking and cycling path. It would inspire more active lifestyles. Yet, the independent councillor argued the current process is needlessly complex and expensive, delivering little value for the investment.

"We’re spending hundreds of thousands of euros on consultants to design these possible routes, again, just to tick a box to say that we’ve done it, and it’s a shameful waste of money,” Cllr McGrath said.

"I was shocked to learn that the proposed cost per kilometre of this project is estimated at €1million to €2million, and the route itself is around 20 kilometres long, so Cllr McGrath noted that other county councils have managed to build footpaths and cycleways along busy roads without facing such obstacles. running into the same problems.

"On the N77 between Abbeyleix and Durrow, and that runs parallel to the N8 as well, on the N16 in Claremorris and the N86 between Dingle and Annascaul in Kerry, where a simple cycle and footpath has been designed, separated from the road by a crash barrier, but it didn’t go through all the hoops that we are facing,” she said.

"I think that the policy should be amended by the Department going forward, so future schemes are not tied to doing these exercises just as a box-ticking exercise,Sinn Féin councillor Annemarie Ryan seconded Cllr McGrath’s motion, stating that both councillors and local residents had assumed the most apparent route would be selected, without the necessity for multiple route options.

"I think we all naively assumed that was going to be the route, so we got a bit of a shock when we saw the five different routes, and as Cllr McGrath mentioned, the money, it just seems like madness,” she said.

"The fact that there are comparisons that Cllr McGrath spoke about there, it comes down to more autonomy at the local level, efficient spending of public money and a route that is already identified. I get it if you’re starting from scratch, but we have a route identified already, so I really want to support this motion,” Cllr Ryan said.