Press Release:

Today Minister Eamonn Ryan recently attended a virtual Special Meeting of Cork City Council’s Roads, Transportation and Mobility Strategic Policy Committee (SPC) where he outlined central government’s commitment to the Cork Metropolitan Area Transportation Strategy (CMATS) 2040.

 In his intervention to Minister Ryan, Member of the SPC Independent Cllr Kieran McCarthy noted:

“It is important that Ireland’s second city gets the full CMATS project across the line – that it just doesn’t become another report collecting dust on a shelf. We cannot go on to have 70% of commuters arriving into the city utilising private cars or have trucks going through our city’s city centre because of a lack of options.”

“Cork City Council must remain as a strong partner in delivery of CMATS.There is an ambition at national level but it is also important to note Cork City Council’s ambition for its citizens and indeed our frustration on the ground when there is only a narrow bank of funding available at national level, and our complete dependency on such funds due to a lack of funds at local level”.

“When thinking about the delivery of CMATS, linkages also need to be promotedsuch as between sustainable housing development and public transport, air quality control, and the continuing importance to keep bringing a wide range of stakeholders around the table – silos need to be broken and linkages and building partnership capacity encouraged”.

“There is also a larger amount of work required to access funding from larger financial tools. The cost to deliver CMATS is far beyond the resources of Cork City Council and Cork County Council – both face vast cut-backs in this COVID and in the post COVID world – we also don’t have the localised funding in our budgets to bring about the significant behavioural change and infrastructure that needed. But we do have the expertise to implement projects on the ground”.

“I would ask of the Minister to explore the future role of expanding government’s Urban Regeneration Development Funds, the role of investment packages from the European Investment Bank, and even the role of the new Green Deal funds from European Regional Development Funds package”, concluded Cllr McCarthy.