Fail/Refusal!!

Can’t impose fines and penalty points on roads so RSA aren’t interested

A more apt question would be, ” Is your local road as GOOD as this one?

That’s right Alan – the reader who sent in the pic said there is another two-mile stretch that “looks like a minefield” (see his comments in the article above). Have you ever complained to the local authority? I’m just wondering if either the Meath or Cavan councils pass responsibility for the road back and forth because it crosses a county border? Would be interesting to know…

I hear some people are actually getting together to lump sums of money to councils to re tar their roads. This on top of rising motor tax which obviously doesn’t go into roads. where does this money go?

Three guesses Chris.

This road is most definitely in Co. Meath as it is about 5 miles from Kingscourt and the county border is about a half mile from Kingscourt . I have reported it two weeks ago to the Kells civic office as I almost had a head on collision with another car trying to avoid the holes.

Crikey, hope you were unharmed Alan. Let me know if you get any response from the civic office – someone has just sent me the response he got from his local council with regards to the road near his home. It was, let’s say, a disappointing response. Cheers, Susan.

How could you almost have a head on collision? Speed limit would be 80km max and given the obvious conditions both drivers should have been going at a speed suitable to the road conditions? If a collision occurred, it can only be down to driver behaviour.

It is difficult for drivers to behave as perfect as you think they should when trying to avoid huge pot holes. On dangerous roads head on collisions can happen at a range of speeds but on this occasion there was no collision due to good driver behaviour

Brian. your wrong there. Even on dry road some potholes could be covered by pools caused after heavy rain. So even driving to suit road conditions, that is a road condition that is impossible to avoid and could cause loss of steering control and could lead to a head-on especially if your not familiar to the area. Always avoid the unexpected, and this is one of them.

Brian, your comment only makes sense if speaking about a straight road. However, if you look at the image in the article you will clearly see a bend in the road. Now, take two vehicles driving at 30 km/h on the same side of the road to avoid writing their respective cars off and travelling round a corner and I think you can see how a head-on collision could occur.

Brian – at 30kmh and taking due care. I don’t think but nothing surprises me about Irish drivers. If you’re on a road like this you would be expecting the unexpected.

Get a job

Hi Sara. Nice photo of u & Sween!! Your roads aren’t that bad – if you chose to live in a*** of nowhere what do you expect… Country has far too many roads anyway & county councils are broke. Get Sween to go for a dip in a pothole and you might get something done..

Please do, Sara!

Don’t diss Lisgoold/Leamlara. That’s Crystal Swing country!

Good man mullah, but I suppose more attention should be paid to where you live?

We can’t all live in glorious Wicklow – if I’ve figured out who this is…as a city girl originally I wouldn’t swap living the a**hole of nowhere for anything – except the odd decent road obviously…

Sara you must be a super sleuth! Loving all red thumbs..

I’ve seen pics of that lisgoold/leamlara road elsewhere online, truly horrific, it deserves to be highlighted….

Hi Mack, I live in county Meath and to be honest most roads are like this r worst. My local town,Athboy for anyone that has had the joy of being there is a complete disgrace. Not only has the Main Street been replaced with potholes galore but also the road is sinking. My road tax is due today and I actually am trying to make myself pay it. We pay the same as everyone else yet we are subjected to excuses for roads. To answer your question, I have submitted an email and a letter to Meath co council (to which I received no reply) confirming that any damage done to my car will be at their expense as I have paid my road tax and household charge. I have pre warned them. I’d say ill be singing for the money!!!

My understanding is:

You should be driving mindful of the road condition (including the state of the road). If there are large potholes, you should be driving very slowly, to allow you to go around them.

If a council is notified of a danger on the road (ie; large hole, but also oil spills/floods or similar) there then can arise a liability where they need to put warning signs up, or fix things up. But, for potholes I think this is likely case by case and the evidence of the many many potholes in the country would tend to suggest they’re aren’t caught for it very much.

One thing which is true, though, is that if a council undertakes to repair a pothole, and does a bad job of it (ie; after repairs, the pothole is made unsafe) then – through taking action – a liability for the council may arise. This could explain why so many of the potholes go entirely unattended. Trying to fix them can leave a council exposed.

The legal situation is this Mack – the council’s are not liable for any damage caused due to a road’s condition. Denis is actually quite right when he says if a council undertakes to fix a pothole and makes a bad job of it, then, and only then, does the council become liable. This is one reason why potholes can be left for months or even years before they are repaired. I also have a feeling that it may also have something to do with why most repairs or enhancements (such as new footpaths in urban areas which requires the removal of certain sections of the roadway before that is replaced) these days are subcontracted out – partly to save money, but also partly to absolve liability.

I think the legal terms are malfeasance and misfeasance. If they don’t fix it they aren’t liable. If they do fix it (badly) and you have an injury or damage then they are liable.

If they “fix it badly” it’s not fixed and they should be sacked.

……and after digging for 20mins the local Cavan farmer finally found his euro coin.

Copper wire was accidentally invented by two Cavan men fighting over a penny.

This is the R164 that I also travel each day to work and this photo only shows a small part of it

Ill take it you sent the photo in so.

No not me but I would have a long time ago if I thought it would get them repaired

This is pretty normal for rural roads in Kerry.

And your representatives want to let people drink while negotiating roads like that?

That’s what happens around here – some stretches of road have been repaired properly and can cope with the floods & bad weather but most have just had the potholes filled and the tarmac is gone with the next heavy rainfall. We live up a boreen & my husband has cleared out the drainage ditches to ensure water can flow off the road so less damage will be caused. There’s a lot of heavy vehicles (both farm & business) travelling on some of the public roads around here – they cause most of the damage, not drivers of private vehicles – surely the motor tax they pay should be used on these roads. Don’t go blaming rural dwellers for the problem.

In vast locations like Russia it would be passable but in a tiny 26 county state its unforgiveable

To be fair, of its a public road its a disgrace.

True Bilbo…but sometimes trying to get the councils to repair the well-travelled roads is a trial, nevermind the small local roads.

In all fairness, who gives a hoot about this road? It’s an L road.

The dozens of people who live along it, presumably.

How selfish of them.

Ryan – You may be able to clarify this. It would appear from news reports that this particular road may be a private road and not taken in charge by the council?

It’s a cul-de-sac?

Also, when looking at Google Maps there seems to be quarrying activity that is accessed by these roads? Are their quarry trucks using the road?

Hi again.

I’m under the impression that its a public road. It’s certainly a through road, but although the quarries adjoin it, it doesn’t service them.

(I don’t live there, by the way.)

What part of R164 do some people not understand. R for Regional not L for local this is what most would consider a main thoroughfare

Sorry lads I hadn’t read all the previous comments and looked at the pictures to see you were talking about a different road. This thread was started about the R164.

Others who use these roads daily have also commented on this thread, it is a public road. I’m from Cavan too and this is nothing too remarkable. I lived in Newport for a while too and the roads around Furnace aren’t anything to special neither!

a WHAT?

Sorry Eric, it is only negligence if the Council repair the road and do it badly. It is not negligence if the fail to do anything !

Most of the roads leading in and out of kildare town are potholed and patched, and I don’t think you can blame household charge instead you can blame telephone, water, electric companies who dig up these roads, and not relaying them to high enough standard. Or do we blame the road crews who resurface the roads during winter months where the surface water prevents the tar from sticking between the layers.

People in rural Ireland are tax-payers too and are net contributors to the economy – many of the roads that are in very bad repair are vital economic conduits to farms ( they are economic entities down “da country” you know Eric – that by their nature must be in the middle of nowhere!) forests, quarries, tourist destinations and the many businesses people conduct from their homes in order to make a living and on which they pay tax also- by their nature must be in “the middle of nowhere”. To suggest – there is a “sense of entitlement” that is unjustified from from the motor tax we pay, the income tax, the VRT tax, the excise on petrol and diesel we pay together with an upcoming property tax etc is laughable. The expense associated with the upkeep of infrastructure (especially regional roads – depicted above) in the rural environment pays an economic dividend – in food exports, domestic food consumption, timber production, tourism and associated service industries yielding those all important exchequer receipts. Also, many people in rural Ireland chose in a democratic country to live in a non-urban environment – even if their business or means to earn a living is not intricately connected to the land or rural setting and bear all by themselves the transport costs, the fuel costs, to commute to work in the absence of more affordable public transport – because they want to , to be near loved ones, to enjoy the sea air, to whatever…all the same they pay tax by and large and even these “deluded gombeens” are entitled to a decently paved regional road…a garda station every 10 to 20 miles…a post office every 10 miles or so…

So your solution is to let all the boggers* into towns/cities? Even though most towns’ infrastructures are probably at capacity as it is? Not to mention the smell of $hyte they’ll bring with them!? (*= I’m a recovering bogger myself)

You put it in a nicer way then I would have Peter!!! Eric, not everyone can afford to buy in cities, people work on farms and need to be there (that’s how you get the milk you drink, the meat,veg etc, this can’t be done in cities) I’m not in the middle of nowhere, I’m in a town and I have what you couldn’t even describe as roads, I pay more then you would to fix my car because something in the car goes more regularly and that’s me driving through my town at 35-40 km. yet I pay the same taxes as you who have perfectly maintained roads, gritted at the sight of frost and public transport galore. An post may pay more to deliver mail but we pay more to get places with our only public transport being bus eireann or in pretty much anyone’s case having to buy a car as means for a transport. your point is not valid enough and an insult to most of the nation.

Eric – you are spot on. This is the truth that people who choose to live in unsustainable rural developments choose to ignore.

However, it’s worth noting that many of these bohereens were built in older times to keep the locals busy. We should simply stop maintaining them. They should become unsealed and replaced with gravel roads reducing the maintinance overhead and still allowing access.

Eric, right on. And if rural dwellers pay for group water schemes since they are too remote for nearest town or village water services, why can’t the same logic be applied to their remote roads. If you can’t afford it don’t go there. If you are there and can’t afford it, move out and let in someone who can. There has to be SOME line drawn somewhere in the mud or we’ll have a Healy-Rae madcap proposal to have a motorway to every god-forsaken thatch in the mountains. Beyond belief what people feel entitled to. Whatever happened ‘the user pays’ principle?

Barry – if many an urban community showed a fraction of the get up and go that rural communities and small towns often do – to collect litter and refuse dumped illegally, to build foot paths and clean up road sides and generally enhance rural areas and cooperate in “group schemes” without the slightest cent from Central Government – then perhaps yourself and your cohorts would not be so inclined to adopt such a utilitarian stance on the “cost” of rural Ireland and concentrate more of your creative energies on solving the ills that befall the urban Irish landscape that appear on this website on a daily basis… The point about planning on one off housing is in fairness a legitimate one especially if it three quarters of a way up a mountain and the issue of ribbon development – maybe when more clustered housing is appropriate. If “planning” however, is to cram high density housing estates, of which there are many examples in Irish villages today – that are ill-suited to the Irish environment then I say we can do without that kind of “planning”. Give me a “once off” house in rural Ireland any day of the week !

The point, Brian, is to show that despite the road network between towns – which were well funded in the boom times – people living off these routes are not so lucky.
Bear in mind that the reader who sent the picture above has no choice but to use this road every day to get to work. Would you like the cost of car depreciation that he probably has to take into account every year? I certainly wouldn’t.
As someone who has benefitted from the motorway improvements in recent years to get up and down the country, I have always found it a stark contrast the minute I veer off on to what is meant to be a secondary road (ie, just a small step down from a primary road).
I can only imagine that these roads will get worse as local authorities struggle further for funding. We in TheJournal.ie think it is an issue worth highlighting.

Take it you live in a town/city there Brian?

Brian, I once went into a pothole in Wexford and came out in Wicklow.
It’s fairly bad out there!

Not sure about legalities in this country but in the UK the councils have to pay for repairs to cars that are damaged by pot holes, some £22 million was paid out by them last year.
.
there is a website in Ireland, — http://www.potholes.ie/claiming.html
.
Not sure how far you will get, but if you continually report a pot hole and its not fixed and subsequently you have damage to your car, (tyre, tracking ect) get a photo of the pot hole, said damage and receipt from your garage and submit a claim. At the end of the day we are paying a tax to keep cars on the road, some of which is supposed to be to maintain the roads. there must be a claim there somewhere.

Susan – why should we be bothered about them? Would these people not have known this? It’s impossible to maintain the 72,000km of local roads to the standard that some people would like them to be.

If you live in these areas then you need to have factored in the depreciation or purchase more durable vehicle as part of the requirement of living there. I would find it odd that you would not have. Clearly, if you are “travelling to work” you have no employment connection to the local area and have obviously made a lifestyle choice.

What the Journal should be highlighting is that it is time to adopt a different attitude to people complaining about these roads. You should also be questioning why so many councils have granted so many permissions to people to build on these roads and continue to do so.

In Australia and New Zealand, for example, these types if rural local roads would be unsealed and thus require little maintenance. This is what we need in Ireland and the money for roads is kept on the main routes that are or national and regional importance. Every cent spent on these two bit roads means less on more important routes and, more importantly, other council services.

Norman – I live in Dublin but raised on a country lane.

Brian – Always a joy.

Susan – i take it you never like the inconvenient facts of the matter get in the way of a good old story.

Oh Brian. Brian, Brian, Brian. Never letting anything get in the way of a good ole’ moan, eh? ;)

Here Here Susan well said I live in west cork and will try later to send a pic of the road to my house its just as bad as the one above.

Hi Dave, thanks for that – if you know the road number as well as the location, that would be helpful too to include, Cheers and mind your chassis! Susan

Susan – I’m quite surprised at your attitude as a news gatherer and reporter. Is the “open thread” premise of the original article not an excuse for one big ‘moan’ in the first place? Joe Duffy on the web.

I’ve simply put another side to the debate – we can’t afford to maintain 72,000kms of roadway and we shouldn’t have allowed people build on these roads. But then again, we are nation that revels in ignoring reality and the inconvenient facts of the matter. I wasn’t aware that comments had to agree with misplaced conventional wisdom and the views of the article author.

Brian – If you consider an ‘open thread’ as ‘Joe Duffy on the web’ and an invitation to moan, then you’ve certainly accepted it.
You asked me why we published this and I explained the intention behind it.
Your response was to tell me why we should write another story entirely. There really is no helpful response I can make to that – especially when you decide to brand me either a sensationalist (‘you never like the inconvenient facts of the matter get in the way of a good old story’) or a ‘newsgatherer and reporter’, depending on whether I agree with your viewpoint or not.
We certainly don’t stop people from expressing different points of view on TheJournal.ie, as you will know from your own lengthy history in our comments section.

Ah shut up Brian.
If you don’t like it, don’t use it.

If we pay motor tax we are entitled to a well maintained road without fear of damage to the car