This article is from page 48 of the 2010-01-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 48 JPG
THE Government should shelf capi- tal projects such as the Gort/Crush- een bypass in favour of funding emergency works on Clare’s belea- guered road network.
That is the opinion of north Clare County Councillor Martin Conway CSCO Mays loe- lionel ela onmerr ime lexomcee per potholes around the county will cause a Serious accident if they are not addressed immediately.
With reports coming in of potholes,
many more than a foot in depth, around the county, Cllr Conway says that quick action is needed in order to avoid a tragedy.
“We have a situation where the roads have deteriorated dramatically over the last number of weeks. We need Clare County Council to carry out an audit on the roads that have been damaged, put together a costing on how much it would cost to bring these roads back to the former stand- ard and we need to present that to Government,’ he said.
“A special fund needs to be estab- lished by the Government to fund this work. Even if a capital project, such as a bypass, needs to be put on hold so that this work can be fi- nanced, then that needs to be done.”
With the local authority budget in the poorest state for many years and funding from central government continuing to be cut, it seems likely that Clare County Council will not be in a position to fund repairs with- out outside help.
“We are already in a situation where
Clare County Council has seen a cut of around 10 per cent in it’s road budget already. We are in a situation at the moment where the budget has been cut for roads by around 30 per cent since 2007. This means that we have to focus on what is the absolute priority and there are roads in every corner of Clare which are 1n a critical condition at the moment,’ he contin- aren
“Motorists are now contending with an obstacle course when driv- ing on the county’s roads. People
are swerving around these potholes to ensure that they don’t do damage to their cars and unfortunately this could very easily lead to a death on our roads,” he said.
“People unfortunately don’t have the chance to drive with any level of comfort or security on the roads. They are watching their cars, they are watching for damage and this is just not good enough in a modern society.
“Even in a recession this is not an acceptable situation.”