Discussion on bridge money spending

A public meeting in Kilcullen this week decided to push for a plan of development for the bridge area that concentrates initially on new railings and lighting.



The meeting -- held in Berneys because the Town Hall was not available, due to refurbishing -- had been called to establish a community position on how best a €120,000 tranche of money from the Department of the Environment might be spent.

The existence of the funding was only recently discovered by Kilcullen Community Action, and though it had been earmarked for a number of years, and is required to be spent by the end of this year, Kildare County Council had not developed any plan for its use as specified in the area of the bridge.

Fears were expressed that departments within Kildare County Council might be eyeing the money for their own budgets, especially the Roads Department to whom the money was nominally allocated.

Now the newly-appointed local engineer, Willie Purcell, is looking for ideas from the community, the meeting was told by Ciaran Forde. And, according to Noel Clare, Cllr Billy Hillis has promised that the local authority's architects will draw up plans on the basis of any ideas which are generated by the community.



The core needs are currently identified as new railings and lighting for the bridge, and repair of the footpaths by replacing the broken paving slabs with cobble-lock. During the discussion, it emerged that the engineer's priorities may currently be in the reverse order to that.

And the worries were that a priority being put to the pavement by the engineer might easily result in there being very little money left for the other needs.



Ronan Murphy said the repair of the pavements should not be part of the expenditure of the €120,000, as there may be 'a bond issue' relating to recent developments that would pay for that.

Ciaran Forde also expressed his belief that local authorities applied 'huge' overheads to projects with which they were involved, such as charging out a lorry at '€400 a day'. "If the engineer is going to spend this money on the pavements, there's not going to be much left for anything else," he commented.

And in response to a remark by Vivian Clarke that there was a need to make the access from the bridge to the square wheelchair-friendly, he wondered if that shouldn't be done anyway out of the council's own funds earmarked for that purpose? "I for one would feel very hard done by if the money allocated for our community project was spent this way," he said.



Pat Canny said it should be made clear to the council that the cobble-lock be excluded in the expenditure of the money. "If the money is put into that first, any railing we might get would be inferior."

Noel Clare relayed Cllr Hillis's feeling that the work didn't actually have to be done by year's end. "It seems that as long as a contract for work is signed by then, the money is ring-fenced," he said, adding that, according to Cllr Hillis, once the project and the community was 'in the loop', further funding was usually obtainable. "So maybe we should go for an ambitious plan," he suggested.

In agreement, Donal Brennan said that the plan should be for 'a decent railing this year' and the project could 'build on that' next year.

Ronan Murphy said that the engineer had already asked consultants to look at the situation and come up with proposals. "He said that he had asked them to consult with the community," he added.

The meeting agreed that a designer was needed to progress the project, because he or she would 'do simple things that work well'. Ronan Murphy said that local geographical survey experts Maptech had offered their expertise in surveying and drawings free of charge to the project.

Both Ciaran Forde and Ronan Murphy emphasised that the community should be 'positive' on the matter, as there is a new engineer for the town 'who is proactive'.

Ronan Murphy noted that the engineer was in favour of using local contractors for the various works, and would welcome suggestions for this. Because the expenditure didn't exceed €120,000 in value, it wouldn't have to go to public tender.

Brian Byrne.