Fermanagh will lay claim to less than 0.5 per cent of a £1 billion transport investment that will see only one capital scheme to improve roads in the county over the next 10 years.

    Only the Cherrymount Link, a 1.1 kilometre link route between the Irvinestown Road and the Tempo Road, looks set to get the go-ahead. This £3.6 million scheme has been put on a 10-year timescale.

    In the Regional Strategic Transport Network Transport Plan unveiled in Cookstown on Tuesday, there was no mention of the southern by-pass which has been identified as the key corridor to help alleviate traffic in Enniskillen.

    The A32 to Omagh, which will become an even more important route when the hospital to serve the south west is built in Enniskillen, is also not addressed in the emerging plan.

    A number of planned improvements to routes outside the county will make a difference to people from here when traveling east. The A4 Dungannon to Ballygawley route is listed for an upgrade of the existing route to dual carriageway standard at a cost of £67.9 million.

    Widened single carriageways to improve opportunities for safer overtaking are also planned for three stretches on the A4 and a single carriageway realignment planned for Annaghilla, the notorious stretch of road between Augher and Ballygawley.

    Next January, the Minister responsible for regional development will look at both the plan and the result of consultations about it and make a decision.

    Currently the man in charge is Mr. John Spellar. When asked on Tuesday at the plan’s launch about the dearth of capital schemes for Fermanagh, he pointed out that the people of the county would benefit from improvements in other areas, such as those for roads leading to Derry, Belfast and Dublin. He also pointed to the improvements being made to Ulsterbus Goldline service. Accessible docking points are to be created at three points along the A4 route to Ballygawley. Bus services are to be more frequent.

    But the smaller population in Fermanagh to that in greater Belfast is a factor, he appeared to concede. “It will also be true that those areas which have denser populations have particular and significant transport requirements,” he said.

    Seven provincial towns are included in the emerging plan for by-passes while Enniskillen is not. The Minister said that this was an interim plan. People from the area can make their views known about it, he said.

    Lobbying for Fermanagh was Mr. Rodney Connor, Clerk and Chief Executive of Fermanagh District Council. He said there were concerns about the principles underpinning the development strategy that informs the transport plan. “We believe it is unfairly biased towards the eastern corridor and rail. In Fermanagh we don’t have a choice of rail. We certainly welcome the programmes of work, but we feel we have been very much short-changed,” he said.

    45 per cent of the budget is going to rail improvements, said Councillor Tom Elliott, who registered his disappointment at the plan. “The Cherrymount Link represents £3.6 million out of £1 billion and is 0.5 per cent out of the total,” he said.

    While welcoming the improvements, he added: “In general, it is not offering a great lot to the west of the province and Fermanagh in particular”.

    “Almost every major town in Northern Ireland has been by-passed with the exception of Enniskillen. The Cherrymount Link will help to some degree but it will certainly not help that traffic coming in the Sligo Road, Shore Road or the Lisbellaw Road”.

    Councillor Gerry McHugh said that there should be strategic linkages between plans for roads north and south of the Border. “We are one island and the plan should have had that linkage,” he said.

    Comment: It’s a joke, but it’s not funny

    The Minister responsible for roads in Northern Ireland went to Cookstown on Tuesday to announce draft plans for capital projects across Northern Ireland in the next 10 years.

    Wisely, he didn’t come to Enniskillen. To begin with he would probably have got stuck in traffic, and when he did make his announcement it wouldn’t have received much of a reception here. It was hard to escape the conclusion that Fermanagh’s allocation was a joke; but nobody here is laughing.

    Bluntly, as far as Fermanagh is concerned, Minister, it is pathetic. Out of a planned spend of £1billion pounds, Fermanagh will get £3.6million for just ONE capital project — and that’s a stretch of road of just 1.1 kilometres.

    The Cherrymount link, of course, is welcome, especially if it alleviates the expected increase of traffic if the new amalagamated High School is built on the Tempo Road.

    But the Cherrymount link is hardly a by-pass.

    A by-pass is needed as Enniskillen continues to choke with traffic. The case has been made for some time, and was re-inforced articulately and forcibly to Peter Robinson when he was Minister and visited the area.

    There is no reference whatsoever in the 10-year plan to the by-pass; one can only imagine what traffic on the island town will be like by then.

    There is no reference, either, to the A32. The road between Enniskillen and Omagh needs upgrading anyway, but how much more would that be the case if a new hospital is built to serve both areas.

    Apart from the Cherrymount link, the only other piece of good news is that a new dual carriageway will link Ballygawley to the M1. Apart from the temptation of saying that the authorities clearly believe that the best thing they can give Fermanagh is the road out of it, this stretch is also welcome.

    But there is precious little in this for Fermanagh. A few crumbs at most; and there is clearly serious discrimination against the west in general and Fermanagh in particular.

    It’s hard to blame the Minister. John Spellar will head back to Britain soon, and one hopes that he has a better grasp of the locality there than he showed on Tuesday. Quite frankly, he didn’t display much knowledge of Fermanagh and its problems.

    So who is to blame? The civil servants?

    There is serious under-investment in Fermanagh, not just in roads, but in many other ways.

    If the meagre allocation of roads money is anything to go by, local representatives have a real job on their hands in convincing those in authority in the east of the real need here.