Enniskillen Bypass £6.6m blow: 'Double whammy' as one-sixth of stalled scheme's budget handed back to be spent elsewhere
One-sixth of the money supposed to be spent on the long-delayed Enniskillen Bypass, currently stalled pending a legal appeal of a different project, has been reassigned to be splurged elsewhere.
The decision has been greeted with outrage by unionists, with the DUP’s Deborah Erskine branding the cash loss on top of news the scheme is once more on ice a “double whammy” blow to the area.
As the News Letter revealed yesterday, the £36m bypass is one of three schemes Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins has put on hold while her department tries to overturn a court’s refusal of the A5 overhaul, which was last year blocked because it didn’t comply with climate change targets.
On the cards since 2006, the Enniskillen project will build a 1.3-mile road to the south of the Co Fermanagh town including bridges across two rivers, reducing traffic jams and improving journey times for drivers as well as boosting safety by adding overtaking lanes, plus a cycleway and pedestrian crossings.
But the Sinn Fein minister says it can’t go ahead until legal action over the A5 is done.
Now it turns out £6.6m of the scheme’s £36m budget has been given back so it can be spent elsewhere – part of a range of measures Sinn Fein Finance Minister John O’Dowd announced today, with large amounts of money to go on tackling potholes and boosting pay for public sector workers.
The move has outraged other politicians, with Mrs Erskine calling it the “outworking of a political choice to vote for unrealistic climate targets, which is now holding back infrastructure development in the west of Northern Ireland”.
“Construction could already have been underway,” said the DUP MLA, “but now there is no timetable for when that could happen.
“Here we see the real-world impact of a Sinn Fein minister on our most westerly constituency. This is not the fault of the UK government, only their own political blundering.”
Ulster Unionist MLA Diana Armstrong argued taking away the cash “risks further delaying essential improvements to connectivity and safety in Fermanagh”, while SDLP councillor Adam Gannon said people in Enniskillen are “fed up with congestion and delays”, adding the bypass is “critical to the future development of the town”.