"Making the roads safer for people — it’s hard work, but it's fulfilling"
Noel Larkin, who retains fond memories of his career with Cork County Council, working in the Machinery Yard in Mallow. Photo: Sheila Fitzgerald Photography
Killavullen-based Noel Larkin may be retired from his Cork County Council job as a driver at the Machinery Yard in Mallow but he is still farming, something that he always fitted in with his job. But he chose to keep working with the council until the age of seventy when he had to retire recently.
Prior to working with the council, Larkin worked for a haulage company for nearly ten years, doing a lot of long-distance driving. He has a licence to drive every kind of vehicle.
“I had all the skills going into the council job,” he says. “The Machinery Yard in Mallow is a plant where trucks are kept in shape. I was mostly driving a grader machine, used when the roads are in poor shape. You’d use stone on potholes and would fill the inlet with a wet mix. It would be all compacted with a big roller. Then you’d tar and chip the area, leave it for a while and then take up loose chips and tar it again.
“As part of the winter maintenance programme, I did a lot of road salting. You’d have a specific route to do from a lorry with spreaders. It was to prevent ice. Most of the time it was ok because you’d get the call to go out before the ice would set in. But sometimes you could be going out in very bad conditions.”
Dependent on the weather forecast, it was hard to call at times as there could be showers which could turn into sleet, frost and black ice.
“We’d start in Mallow and finish up there after five or six hours. The odd time, there was a double shift. You might have to go out again at 3am or 4am before the traffic would start. It was very tough. Afterwards, you’d head home but you’d be back to work at 8.30am. Now, that has changed. You get more time off after a 4am job.”
Asked if he was satisfied with what he was paid, Larkin says: “The pay was ok, but I felt there should have been more of a tax break for working unsocial hours.”
But overall, Larkin says Cork County Council was a good employer.
“The days flew and there was job satisfaction. I enjoyed improving roads and filling potholes. Every hole you filled in, you felt you were doing favours for people in their cars.”
Larkin knows County Cork very well as a result of his former job driving around. He is now concentrating on farming and his son Fergal, a mechanic, is a partner on the farm. They have 100 acres and over 100 cattle.
It’s hard work, but Larkin finds it fulfilling, just as making the roads safer when he was employed by the council was worthwhile work.
“Farming is especially tough in spring when cows are calving and you might have to look in on them at three or four in the morning. But it’s grand. I have more time now for farming.”
Looking back on his 32 years working for Cork County Council as a block-layer, 73-year-old Mickey Joe Healy says it was “a fantastic job. They were the best employers".
Having previously worked in the private building industry, Healy says there was more security working for the council.
“You didn’t have to worry about getting paid. You got everything you were entitled to without question. I think we were well paid at that stage and we got a pension out of it as well as the old age pension.”
Healy spent the first nine years of his council work on the Cork road.
“I used to love going to work because there was so much variety and so many council workers employed there. There were about thirty of us. I did block-laying, I was a stonemason and I worked with brick. I was building entrances for farmers along the road. We went from Mallow to Noel Deasy’s car sales in Cork. It was very physical work. I was able to handle it as I was young, in my thirties.
“After nine years on the Cork road, we were moved on because it was finishing up. I was sent to Mitchelstown. It suited me because it was only fifteen miles away from home. The engineer Tom Stritch was very good that way. He’d do his best for you and if you did your job well, he had all the time in the world for you.”
The work in Mitchelstown was similar to what Healy had been doing on the Cork road.
“We were paving and making walls and entrances. There were about fifteen of us in total there including carpenters and all sorts of trades. I wasn’t involved in the housing part of the work.
"For some of the workers, their full-time job was fixing up council houses after tenants had moved out, before new people moved in. I was out in the countryside mostly. I loved being outdoors. If the weather was bad, you weren’t expected to stay out in it.” Healy says that retirement was a big change.
“I was happy to go when my time came.”
Healy, who is single, says he is handy around the house and over the years, has built a big porch and a back kitchen.
He was first apprenticed to a builder in Fermoy for five years. The company that Healy was with “had the best of tradesmen who would do the upkeep of churches. I worked with the stone mason.”
Healy says that Cork County Council was looking for workers in 1985 when he applied there. “They were replenishing staff. A lot had gone out on retirement.”
One of Healy’s hobbies was going abroad to attend Formula One racing. He has been to Brazil, Italy, Spain, Germany and Monaco but no longer follows the racing as once the engines changed, “the sound became terrible. You’d hear cars starting up a mile away and it would sound like they were buzzing around your ears.”
Nonetheless, Healy is enjoying his retirement after a very positive work experience with Cork County Council.
