Popular Cork pontoon may not be open for summer as funding delayed

A pontoon at Passage West in Cork Harbour was closed for safety in March after an inspection identified 21 defects. Cork County Council estimated repair costs at €30,000 and applied to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for funding. The department had not yet signed off, leaving the council waiting. Tender documents have been prepared, and they will be issued once funding is confirmed. Councillors raised concerns that the pontoon may not be fully operational for summer, when it is heavily used. They also criticised delays in central government budget approvals, noting limited time to complete and receipt engineering works by September.

"The pontoon at Passage West was closed for safety reasons in March after an inspection found 21 defects. The repair costs have been put at €30,000 with the council applying for funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. However, the department has yet to sign off on the funding."

"In a written response Senior Harbour Master Julian Renault said that tender documents have been prepared and "should funding for this work be confirmed, these will be issued as soon as practically possible.""

"Cllr Una McCarthy said "it's good to see that the documents are being prepared in anticipation of the funding and that should help things. But realistically, a pontoon should be fully operational for the summer months. It's a very important time of year to be using it and it's not good enough if this is closed off and people can't use it.""

"Cllr Eoghan Fahy said the pontoon "is closed off at the most important time of the year really in terms of the usage of the water" and he described as "extremely frustrating" the fact that local authorities aren't getting their budgets from central government until the end of May. "All the county engineering work has to be done, completed and receipted by September. So where the government is taking five months to sign off on something, they're giving us three to four months to get the works done," he said."

Read at Irish Independent