15 October 2003: The decision by Kildare County Council to put the Bond Bridge rebuilding project on the long finger has been directly blamed on the council’s plans to spend €2 million a year towards the building of its new Civic Offices.
Maynooth councillor John McGinley, who has expressed his ‘outrage’ at the decision, coming only a short time after the announcement that the tenders for the project and the related Meadowbrook had been completed, is demanding to know where the €1,840,000 already in funding for the bridge has been diverted to.
He says special levies of €1,200,000 had been collected on houses in the area and that the Council had also set aside €128,000 per year for the past 5 years in its Annual Budget for the projects, which total €7.8 million cost (Bond Bridge €6 million).
“Also, the €6m in the tendered price includes a cost of €1.9m for the culverting underneath the bridge which is one of the measures that has to be taken in order to prevent a recurrence of the flooding in November 2001,” he points out. “Funding for flood relief should of course come from central Government as is the case with the Dodder River in Dublin. It is obvious that this U turn by the Council officials arises as a result of cutbacks due to a deterioration in the Council’s finances.”
At the Council meeting last March, when Fianna Fail and Fine Gael Councillors voted to spend €2 million per year for the next 40 years on a new Council Head Quarters, Cllr McGinley and his fellow Labour Party Councillors warned that such expenditure would inevitably lead to cutbacks in major projects.
“It now would appear as if the Manager wants Bond Bridge to be the first casualty,” he says.
