Cork County Council refuses to disclose cost of pothole and footpath claims

Information on the amounts sought won't be released as it was “commercially sensitive”

Figures show there were 501 active claims against Cork County Council at the end of last year, 120 for damage caused by potholes.

Cork County Council bosses have refused to provide details on the total cost of compensation claims lodged against it for accidents caused by substandard footpaths and roads. While they gave a breakdown for the number of claims, they said they wouldn't release information on the amounts sought as it was “commercially sensitive”. 

Officials provided councillors with a list of the claims lodged following a request for the information from Fianna Fáil councillor Joe Carroll.

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Lorraine Lynch, the council's head of finance, said the most recent figures made available by their insurers IPB (Irish Public Bodies) showed 501 active claims against the local authority at the end of last year. They included 146 claims for falls on footpaths, 120 for damage caused by potholes, and a further 115 in relation to other road-related deficiencies. There were also 15 claims lodged over flooding and 44 which were described as 'other'.

Ms Lynch said some claims pre-dated 2020, but did not reveal how many.

“We're not in a position to disclose the estimated value (of the claims) as that is sensitive information,” Ms Lynch said.

Mr Carroll claimed that parts of the road network in West Cork were substandard and this was contributing to claims.

Fianna Fáil councillor Seamus McGrath said councillors often get complaints about poor footpaths and when they lodge these complaints with officials they should receive priority.

His party colleague Gobnait Moynihan agreed and said that more money was needed to be invested in footpath repair programmes to cut down on claims.

Independent councillor Danny Collins said that claimants now have to deal directly with IPB and he said he knew of one man who damaged his car in a pothole near Béal na Bláth and was failing to make progress with the insurer. 

Mr Collins said he had taken up the case on the man's behalf and had rung IPB numerous times without success.

Mr Carroll said it was likely to be the same pothole that reappears every couple of months and has caused damage to a number of vehicles.

He acknowledged the council cannot fill in every pothole as quickly as they appear. However, he claimed there was a noticeable deterioration in footpaths in a number of towns and maintained they weren't getting the same attention as when town councils were in charge.

Fianna Fáil councillor and barrister Gearóid Murphy said that regardless of whether claims were paid out or not, it was costing the council a lot of time and money to address them through their legal department.

“No matter how much money we put into footpaths, unfortunately we will always have people suing us,” he added.

Council chief executive Tim Lucey said IPB had served the council well over the years.

The local authority had in recent years set aside €1m per annum for footpath repairs. He also said that 120 pothole claims had to be considered in the context of  12,000km of roads maintained by the council.

“We're consistently working on risk assessment,” he added.

Some councillors asked what would happen if media requested information on the cost of claims under FoI (Freedom of Information.) Mr Lucey said he wouldn't speculate how the council would respond to an FoI request, but both he and Ms Lynch repeated they'd be slow to grant such a request as they deemed the information commercially sensitive.