This article is from page 3 of the 2012-07-24 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 3 JPG
A PLAN for the development of the mid-west region for the next 20 years has been branded a “complete waste of money”.
The € 1.2 million Mid West Area Strategic Plan (MWASP) will cost Clare County Council € 184,000, yet local county councillors claim that its main concern is furthering the development of Limerick City at the expense of Clare.
Cllr PJ Kelly (FF), who is a member of the Mid West Regional Authority, is particularly critical of the plan stating, “It is a document that serves no purpose other than to further the needs of Limerick City.”
The plan is described as a “Planning Land Use and Transportation Strategy” that covers North Tipperary, Limerick City and Limerick County and County Clare.
However following the next local elections in 2014 Tipperary North will cease to exist, as it will be amalgamated with Tipperary South.
Cllr Kelly has now called for the plan to be reviewed if there is any “territorial change”.
Following the local authority changes in Tipperary, the Clare county councillor believes Tipperary North will have to be omitted or the South included making the current plan, which is in its final draft stage, nul and void.
Senior Planner with Clare County Council Gordon Daly told The Clare People that the MWASP was similar to strategies that have been prepared in other parts of the country.
Asked about the costings he explained, “The overall cost of the strategy over a four to five year period is € 1.2m. A grant of € 600,000 was received from the Department of Transport, primarily focused on the transportation and smarter travel assessments of the plan. This would have involved a substantial amount of survey work and traffic counts. The balance of the funding (€ 600,000) is shared between the four local authorities in the region on the basis of population. The overall cost to Clare County Council over the four to five year period is approximately € 184,000,” he said.
“Also, one of the main benefits of MWASP has been the development of an overall transport model which is available to the local authority for future traffic assessments and the model is available to Clare County Council and can be used by the council in the future,” added the senior planner.