Martin Farren delighted with shore path money
Emergency Funding
Donegal applied for around €1.9 in emergency funding after the storms of early January. It’s just been announced that they are getting £1.4m.
The day of the storm was Friday 3rd of January. Martin contacted the Council Roads and Transport Manager and, despite it being a Friday night when they spoke, the two of them took a walk along the shore to see what damage had been done, despite it being a Saturday morning.
The Council Manager had already seen photos and film of the storms and the damage done when Martin spoke to him. The Manager got a couple of engineers out to assess the damage.
They came up with a figure of €70,000 and that was included in the Council’s claim to the Government for emergency funding.
Lobbying for Moville & Greencastle
Martin Farren then called the Junior Labour Transport Minister, Alan Kelly, and lobbied him for the funds.
It seems that the Minister had already seen the damage wreaked on Moville via the films taken by Don McGinley, Anthony Craig and CorMc and the pictures of the shore walk path taken by Eddie Harkin.
The article on CraicOn showing the storm damage with pictures by Eddie was read 9,000 times – more than three times the joint populations of Moville and Muff.
First in the Queue
A picture paints a thousand words (or in this case 70,000 Euros) and the films that those guys took and the photos have put Moville & Greencastle at the very front when funds were being awarded.
Indeed a couple of the films were shown several times over on a national film about the storms on Three, with the caption Moville, Co. Donegal as Don McGinley’s and CorMc’s films wer shown.
The Finance Minster, who would be responsible for allocating funds, was interviewed throughout the film and said that the appropriate funds would be allocated.
Well done to those guys!
The shore walk path is going to get fixed (and probably made better and stronger) and you certainly made it a lot easier for Martin Farren and Donegal County Council to ‘sell’ the need for money for Moville & Greencastle, when the people they were talking to had already seen the films and photos of the battering that Moville took.
See Storm Damage Repair Funds for Moville / Greencastle.
