People 'enraged' over lack of public lights on Tipperary road

Tipperary County Council hopes to come up with a proposal to provide public lights to illuminate the footpath and cycleway on Clonmel’s bypass road “in the very near future”.

District Administrator Michael Moroney also told a meeting of Clonmel Borough District that the council was researching possible funding sources and that was an ongoing process.  

Cllr. Richie Molloy said people were “enraged” that so much money was being spent on resurfacing the road, yet there was no allocation for public lights between the Cahir road roundabout and the Cashel road roundabout.

This was a really big issue and he suggested they write to Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) requesting that lights would be installed as a matter of urgency.

Cllr. Molloy said they were all aware of the fatality that had occurred there recently, on the footpath and cycle lane. People cycled and walked there in the pitch dark during winter’s evenings and the surface was quite slippery at times. 

He said it made the council “look foolish” that so much money was being spent resurfacing the road, yet they couldn’t secure public lighting. 

And people still couldn’t understand why the surface wasn’t smooth despite the money that had been spent.

The original road surface appeared to have been perfect and it had never flooded, he said.

Cllr. Pat English said it was TII who had the say on whether public lights would be provided. The job would probably have been done by now if it had been up to the council.

It was very unsafe in the pitch dark and the sooner something was done in the short term the better. Even if they couldn’t provide lighting now, they could instal ducting until such time as funding was made available for lights, he suggested.

Cllr. English said the new surface on the road “wasn’t fit for purpose” and he hoped the final surface would be better.

District Mayor Garret Ahearn said that the provision of lighting on this road was a priority for him and they needed to source funding. Extra funding would be available this year in the council’s budget, and that was why he had voted in favour of the budget.

While they had been told they needed to wait until the job was finished, people were also commenting every day about the poor and dangerous condition of the road surface.

People had said you wouldn’t get a worse surface on the top of Slievenamon, he stated. 

For more Tipperary news read Search begins for Tipperary Rose