By Conor Sharkey

FUNDING worth £650,000 could be wasted if government ministers continue to drag their feet over the Strabane Bridges Project.

Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy and Social Development Margaret Ritchie will both receive letters this morning, again calling for the immediate commencement of the long awaited bridges scheme.

For almost a decade now, blueprints for two pedestrian bridges over Mourne, one north and one south of the old Strabane bridge, have been on the table. And recently, transport charity Sustrans committed the £650,000 required to build one of the bridges, with a commitment from government that they would back the other.

Since then however, very little progress on the project has been made, despite sustained lobbying from Strabane Council.

Planning permission for the entire scheme will be in place before Christmas. But a failure by government to release promised funding continues to hamper progress.

On Tuesday night, a frustrated Strabane District Council bloc voted to write to Ministers Murphy and Ritchie to demand that the project be moved forward immediately.

In the letter, Council has outlined how £650,000 will be saved if the "once in a lifetime opportunity" to embrace the bridges project in its entirity is seized upon.

Speaking at a meeting of Council on Tuesday, Sinn Féin's Jarlath McNulty said the delays had left the project on the verge of becoming farcical.

"This Council has done everything to request funding for the bridges.

"I'm beginning to think we are banging our heads against a brick wall here.

"I'm a bit concerned at this point that this might not be started this year and there are concerns on what attention this project will get as we go nearer transition with Derry.

"In 2000, we saw the plans for the bridges and everyone knew it was for two bridges. Not even one single person can say they didn't know that.

"So there are high concerns that if this is not done right, it will be put on the long finger and we won't get what we deserve," Mr McNulty said.

Councillor James O'Kane suggested that if the project doesn't go ahead, then he and the rest of representatives will have failed as politicians.

And Danny Breslin said it would be a long time before that failure is forgotten within the Strabane community.

"It's a big project to fall on its face. If this situation can be resolved then it is exactly the kind of legacy we want to be leaving.

"If if can't, we will take some beating ourselves," he warned.