€28 million’s been allocated to Carlow and Kilkenny
Minister Darragh O’Brien’s confirmed the monies to local Fianna Fáil TDs today.
The bulk of the funding’s for Kilkenny City’s Abbey Quarter and Project Carlow 2040.
Deputy John McGuinness has told KCLR News “I was speaking this morning to the Minister Darragh O’Brien following ongoing representations that I’ve been making to him in relation to this fund and I’m delighted to say that he informed me this morning that €11.46 million will be made available to the Abbey Quarter project, a further €6.64 million will be made available for streetscapes in Kilkenny and in Carlow €9.79 million will be made available for Project Carlow 2040 so it’s exceptional news for the local economy and it represents a huge government investment in what will be enhanced city-centre locations and a massive project of course in the context of the Abbey Quarter and Carlow Project 2040 it’ll be a big boost and it’s a welcome sum of money and it is the maximum amount asked for so it enables the projects to be rolled out without any delay or waiting for a second tranche of funding”.
He adds “I think we’ll be moving into a very different world after the Pandemic and places like the Abbey Quarter and the public realm there with its space for people will be hugely important and similarly with the enhanced High Street, Rose Inn Street and St Mary’s Crescent, they will just add to the visual for Kilkenny and will help tourism greatly and all of our centre of cities and centre of urban centres need to be improved and uplifted after this Pandemic is finished and likewise in Carlow I think it’s fantastic that they had a project that looked out towards 2040 and now they’re getting the maximum funding, 9.79 million, to complete that so it’s good news for both counties”
While his Carlow Kilkenny colleague Jennifer Murnane O’Connor on KCLR Live also welcomed the funding for both counties, but especially for her home town.
She says “It’s a great news story for Carlow, for the town regeneration of Carlow, so it’s a huge project going to happen in the centre of Carlow, the linkage between from Fair Green onto Barrack Street then you come over to Potato Market down Tullow Street and around down by Dublin Street”.
She adds “Hopefully there’ll be another phase because we have applied for over €20 million but the other money is being looked at as well and that’s something I’m committed to working on”.
While Sinn Féin’s Kathleen Funchion had a word of warning, telling KCLR “I always think with all of these funding announcements when you actually see the fruits of that funding and you actually see the work being done, like it’s welcome but I would always be cautious of welcoming because we’ve had a lot of various announcements of funding but we didn’t actually see the actual action of that so you always have to watch the space and you always have to still be fighting and campaigning for different things but I’d welcome any funding to any area in either of our counties.
