West Mayo councillors want action on multiple road projects

Councillors in the Westport-Belmullet Municipal District have documented a list of projects in the area that need to be added to Mayo County Council's roads programme.

At last week's meeting of the authority, calls were made to cut trees in Pinewoods, King's Hill, High Street and Quay Hill in Westport, and at a site in Kilmeena, which were stated to be posing danger to homes.

Roadside placenames removed during the N5 development must also be replaced, such as at Ballinlough, councillors asserted, as well as the green bollards that used to direct traffic into townlands such as at Derrygorman and along the Newport Road.

Cllr John O’Malley, on discovering it was the council’s tourism section that is in charge of the greenways, said he wished to raise the matter of flooding along the Westport-Newport route.

“Acres of land are flooded along it but when the greenway was being put in landowners were promised the rivers would be taken care of and that there would be no flooding and no fencing would need to be done. Well, an awful lot of fencing has been done in Kilmeena.” 

He also said a motorist was almost killed exiting Gortwaria because there was no stop sign there or warning of oncoming cyclists. The same applied at the exit road serving the Kilbride Nursing Home, and he also bemoaned the failure to start the Newport to Derrada roadworks, as had been promised this summer.

Cllr Gerry Coyle called for speed ramps on the roads into Bangor for safety purposes, telling management: “Surely to God you can put in two lumps of tarmacadam where there is a church or a school. They are proven to slow traffic down.” 

Cllr Chris Maxwell said some of the trees around Louisburgh have grown so high it’s not possible to exit some roads. 

“It’s tree shears we need, not hedge-cutters”, he said, adding: “I can see in a lot of places the road cracking and weakening. All you need is one readymix truck and the road will collapse and we will have a serious problem. In other counties there are grant schemes to incentivise landowners to shear trees. It’s becoming a very serious issue.” 

Area engineer Heather Gibbons said in the locations identified, the council could write to the landowner under the Roads Act to trim or cut the trees within the boundaries of their property. She also confirmed there is a community incentive scheme for such work in place.

On the question of liability, she said that should damage or an accident occur on the road, the council would have liability only where the trees were on the road, otherwise, it lies with the landowner.

Cllr Paul McNamara expressed dismay that despite calls for work on the three bridges at Cashel and Achill Sound he now understood it would be 2026 or 2027 before any work would be done.

Ms Gibbons confirmed that an application for funding had been made, the design office was now working on it, and if it was found that the work requires planning permission, that would be the next stage, following which construction could take place.

Cllr McNamara said he was very disappointed the process was taking so long, saying: “So we are going to go through two more years of the chaos we have gone through where two accidents occurred in July and August and another one in May. It is just a very dangerous situation where we have three bridges that are not fit for purpose and we are still two years off fixing them. It is moving along but it is very slow and I just hope there is no fatality while we are waiting because even the guards have made a plea in regard to how dangerous they are. There will be two more full tourist seasons in Achill ahead before any works take place on them.”