Funding should be shared with leisure centre project says Cllr Jack Murray

A Buncrana councillor has asked if there was any scope to provide funding from the Repowering Buncrana regeneration project for the local leisure centre.

Back last January the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humpreys TD announced that €1.17 million had been awarded for this. It is now due to progress to the procurement of the required consultancy services before the start of the planning and statutory consent stages enabled by the funding.

The issue was raised at Tuesday's Inishowen Municipal District meeting by Cllr Jack Murray. He said there was a huge amount of money involved and it would make more sense for the two projects to run in tandem with one another.

"The leisure centre is such an important and vital part of the shorefront of the town as a whole and is there an opportunity to explore if they can be done together? I know things have run on far too long and that there is money within our capital budget for it but is there any additional leverage we could use from the Repowering Buncrana project it might be worthwhile," he said.

Killian Smith from the Inishowen MD's planning section said he would follow this matter up.

"It's all fundamentally in the one area so I imagine there would be some way that both projects should complement each other and be integrated. I will get clarity on it from our Community and Enterprise and Regeneration units," he said.