City hopes for €20m Smart Travel funds looking bleak

Date Published: 09-Dec-2010

By Dara Bradley and Denise McNamara

The Government’s €50 million ‘Smarter Travel’ initiative – 40% of which Galway is bidding to secure – looks likely to fall victim to the €1.8 billion in infrastructural spending cuts announced by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan in Tuesday’s draconian budget.

Galway City and County Councils jointly applied for almost €20 million of the €50 million available in a national dedicated transport fund, and had planned to introduce sustainable transport methods throughout the city and its suburbs.

The winning local authorities competing for a slice of the fund were supposed to be informed by the Department of Transport last June if their bid was successful but this deadline was missed and several subsequent announcement dates have been postponed.

There are fresh fears, given the country’s financial turmoil, that the fund will be ‘quietly’ abandoned, like what happened to Galway’s bid for a slice of the €300 million Strategic Infrastructure Fund, which fell by the wayside in 2008.

A total of €104,000 was spent on Galway’s Smarter Travel bid – including private consultants’ reports – with 40% of this paid by the Department.

Former Government Minister, Galway West Deputy Frank Fahey, yesterday conceded the amount of funding available may be cut from the €50 million initially announced at the start of the competitive process but he said it’s not “completely gone”.

At Monday’s Galway City Council budget meeting, all 15 City Councillors agreed the likelihood of securing funding from the Department of Transport was very slim.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.