Payment of grants to preserve Donegal’s railway heritage has gone off track, according to one the county’s leading rail conservationists.
Money is being held up for several months after work has been done on several projects.
What’s more, according to County Donegal Railway Restoration Ltd’s chief operating officer Neil Tee, EU bureaucratic madness is costing more than the grants sought.
CDRRL reckons it is several thousand euro needlessly in the red because of bungling Eurocrats.
Delays are so bad that the organisation, based in Donegal town, has had to resort to its own extra fund-raising events to meet mounting debts.
Mr Tee cited, as a typical example of bureaucracy gone bonkers, a simple issue of clearing a site of waste parts left over from the rebuilding of old rail carriages.
A skip was needed to remove the parts but to qualify for a grant to pay for the job a minimum of two price quotes had to be supplied to the relevant EU department.
At the time of the job there were only two suitable contractors. One submitted a quote and the other couldn’t take on the job and sent an explanatory letter.
The €350 job was done by the company which submitted a quote, but EU officials refused to pay the grant until there was a second quote – even after the work was completed.
Another wacky order was delivered in a message that said a Co. Fermanagh company which carried out shot-blasting on rusting metal parts couldn’t get its money because it didn’t sign off for the job on its own letter-head.
To raise money to cover the gaps in funding left by expected but unpaid grants CDRRL is holding a race night in the Abbey Hotel, Donegal, on Friday week (September 19th) at 10 p.m.

Reporter: Paddy Clancy