‘€548million needed to bring rural Cork roads up to standard’
Tom Stritch, the council’s director of roads, said that cutbacks in government funding, since 2009, and increased adverse weather had left many roads in the county in a poor condition.
He estimates that a one-off grant of €548m is needed just to bring them up to an acceptable condition.
Standard procedure is to resurface 10% of roads every year.
However, Mr Stritch said that because of reduced funding from central government, the county council has been only able to do an average of 4% every year, for the past eight years.
In 2008, the county council received €65m in funding for the upkeep of its 12,600kms of roads. After that, funding was slashed, as the recession took hold.
In 2017, the council received just €36m for road maintenance. It has been increased this year to €44m, but is still far short of what is needed.
Motorists in Cork pay around €100m in road tax every year, yet the county doesn’t even get half of that back from central government to maintain its network.
In 2015, the council paid out €29,690,40 in compensation to motorists for damage caused to their vehicles by potholes. The following year, the figure climbed to €46,726.33 and it is anticipated that last year’s figures will show a hefty increase.
Mr Stritch said the cumulative effect of many years of under-investment can be seen on a number of roads.
“We have been losing ground every year...finances dictate everything. A lot of potholes are appearing. Some roads are quite rough, because of the lack of resurfacing, over the years,” he said.
The senior official said that extreme weather, in recent years, was tearing up road surfaces, because they weren’t properly sealed.
“We have seen some extreme weather in the last 10 years.
“There was some recognition from the Government for that in 2015, when we got €11.5m to repair roads damaged by storms, so we have to acknowledge that,” Mr Stritch said.
In addition, the county council has significantly reduced its number of roadworkers in recent years, due to the recruitment ban.
Allied to that, because of the nature of their all-weather job, sickness rates were far higher among roadworkers than other council staff.
Mr Stritch said that, fortunately, recruitment for roadworkers had recommenced.
He added that the €548m estimate was only enough to bring roads up to a proper surfacing standard and it does not include road-widening projects, removal of bad bends, and other road-safety measures.
Recent county council meetings and municipal district council meetings have been dominated by the state of many roads, especially in north and west Cork.
Standing orders were suspended at a county council meeting in County Hall last month, when a councillor said he been told that ambulances were being slowed down, because of the state of some roads in west Cork.
Cllr Paul Hayes said that he had been informed by members of the ambulance service that they have had to “slow to a crawl”, when transporting some patients to Cork University Hospital, particularly if they have a suspected spinal injury.
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