Roads funding:Offaly, home county to Minister for Finance Brian Cowen, is among the two least successful counties in obtaining funding from the National Roads Programme, according to statistics from the National Roads Authority (NRA).
In a week in which the roads authority received another multi-billion euro allocation - almost €1.7 billion for 2008 - it has emerged that Offaly County Council is one of only two county councils not to have completed a single national roads project.
The entire National Roads Programme, which has been running for eight years, has allocated just one project to Offaly County Council, the N52 bypass at Tullamore which is yet to go to construction, according to the NRA.
Offaly is beaten to the worst position only by Carlow, which has been allocated no schemes to administer.
Although the Carlow bypass is under construction and the tender for the Carlow to Knocktopher dual carriageway has been announced, they are being administered by Kildare and Kilkenny county councils respectively.
Similarly, while the N6 passes through parts of north Offaly, and the N7 crosses through part of the extreme south of the county, these schemes are not being run by Offaly County Council.
While in some cases the distribution of responsibility to councils for road works reflects an abundance of expertise in specific regional national roads design offices, this does not explain the low numbers of national road schemes in some counties compared to others.
The position in Offaly, for example, is in stark contrast to other rural counties such as Donegal which has been allocated 15 schemes under the National Roads Programme, three of which have been completed. Laois has been allocated five schemes, three of which it administers itself, one by Kildare and one by Kilkenny. Mayo has been allocated 15, one of which will be administered by Galway.
While the NRA Roads Programme lists only two schemes in Carlow, it includes 19 schemes in Cork; 13 in each of Dublin and Roscommon; 12 in Limerick; 11 in Tipperary; 10 in each of Galway and Kilkenny; nine in each of Westmeath and Monaghan; and eight in each of Cavan, Wexford and Kerry.
In addition, the announcement of funding for local authorities from this year's allocation of almost €1.7 billion also indicated some regional differences.
While most local authorities received millions of euro in grants for road improvements to national roads, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown - home to Mr Cowen's Cabinet colleague, Minister for Education Mary Hanifin - received nothing. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown was allocated only €710,824 for maintenance. This was against an overall allocation to the four Dublin local authorities of €151,631,063.
The highest allocation for 2008 went to Kilkenny, which receives €244,197,871. It was followed by Dublin. In third position was Galway city and county with a combined total of €134,593,316. The allocation for Co Offaly was €32,720,387.
The lowest 2008 allocations by county (which in some cases includes city and county authorities) was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Carlow which was assigned a total of €1,965,163 for improvements to existing national roads and maintenance. Clare was next at €6,241,443, followed by Sligo with €6,677,362.
A full list of allocations is available at the Department of Transport website: www.transport.ie. A list of road scheme activity, by county, status and route number is available at www.nra.ie.
