A Kerry local elections candidate has said Kerry County Council has questions to answer on the cost of Local Improvement Scheme (LIS) roads in the county.
Tommy Griffin’s comments come following an analysis of annual nationwide LIS allocations per county and the number of roads completed each year per county since 2017.
The LIS is a scheme under which the Department of Rural Affairs grants funding to local authorities to improve non-council roads and lanes. Residents and landowners make a contribution towards the overall cost of works, with grant aid from central government covering the balance.
Kerry has a list of over 600 roads awaiting works under the scheme.
The figures released to Tommy Griffin, following a parliamentary question by Deputy Brendan Griffin, show that on average over the last four years, the cost of each road completed in Kerry required €67,256 of funding from the Department of Rural Affairs.
In that time, only 73 roads were improved from a total allocation of €4,909,695.
This contrasted sharply with Mayo, where 242 roads were improved in the same time for significantly less money – €4,272,801.
Griffin, a Fine Gael candidate in the Corca Dhuibhne Electoral Area, is querying how Kerry County Council is using so much taxpayers’ money and local contributions from applicants and getting so few roads improved in return.
He said over seven years since the reintroduction of the LIS, Kerry County Council improved 196 roads compared to 549 in Mayo over the same period.
Figures for Kerry for that period also compare dramatically poorly to other large rural counties like Donegal, Roscommon and Galway.
“There needs to be an urgent review of how Kerry County Council is operating the scheme. How can roads in Kerry cost so much more to improve than roads in Mayo and the rest of the country?” Griffin asked.
He said he recently came across a case where Kerry County Council quoted almost €60,000 to improve a road awaiting works under the scheme and it required a contribution of about €8,000 from local residents.
“When I approached a reputable private contractor for a quote, the same road could be done by him to a very high specification for just €12,000, almost five times less than the price being quoted by the council,” he said.
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