Rossadrehid road rage mounts as 40-year wait continues
The residents of Rossadrehid have waited over 40 years for a public road leading from the village up to the waterworks to be resurfaced properly.
Hazardous pot holes, ongoing car repair expenses and a patchwork of temporary filled holes have infuriated residents who are frustrated at the lack of response from Tipperary County Council who utilise the road on a daily basis to gain access to Rossadrehid waterworks.
The L83213 road from Rossadrehid village to the waterworks serves twelve residential properties. The road has disintegrated under the weight of artic lorries servicing the waterworks and artic forestry lorries also using this small road as a main thoroughfare.
The road also services walkers, walking groups and tourists to access the walking trail to Lake Muskry, the most accessible of the five corrie lakes in the Galtee Mountains.
Life-long resident Noel O’Brien has been living in Rossadrehid all his life.
DISGRACEFUL
“The last time the road was resurfaced was in the 1980s. The road is absolutely disgraceful. The council keep throwing in temporary tarmac and the holes recur within a month. Tipperary County Council have artic lorries and a tractor with a 20-tonne tank going up to the waterworks. Aherlow Failte are advertising the walk up to Lake Muskry from here and there’s probably a hundred cars going up and down this road a week to get to the car park to commence their walk. The road has to be done or someone is going to get injured and there’s a crash waiting to happen. New build residents and residents who applied for planning had to pay the council thousands of euros towards the road and pavements. There is no pavement on the road and there is hardly any of the road left here,” he said.
BROKEN PROMISES
Resident Ned Cunningham recalls the opening of the waterworks. “When the waterworks was opened, the road on the other side leading down to the village was too narrow for the trucks to go down, so the council designated this road for the waterworks. At that time, the forestry road at the top was a dirt road, and although the council tarred and resurfaced the road for the forestry, they did not put one stone down on this road. The vehicles using this road as access to the waterworks include 7 to 10 ready mix trucks a day, artic lorries bringing the chlorine, plus the forestry with their big truck loads going up and down and now there is a truck that comes out every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to take the waste away that can be up to 7 to 8 loads a day,” he said. The issue of properly resurfacing the road has been brought to many councillors and TDs over the years and the residents have had enough of excuses, broken promises and wasted phone calls.
David Greene moved to Rossadrehid six years ago. “The amount of cost from damage to my cars from the road is significant. The road is in such bad condition that in the last 18 months I’ve replaced cracked springs in my car, shock mountings, shocks, damage to tyres, split tyres and it’s all due to the conditions of the road,”he said. Shane Ferris built a house and moved in a year ago. “Already I’ve had a puncture on my car tyres after hitting a pothole down there...the road is desperate. You’d think that the council would fix this with all the traffic going up to the waterworks,” he said.
MISERY AND DANGER
The L83213 road from Rossadrehid village to the waterworks continues in a horseshoe shape down another road (on the other side) back to village.
This side of the road is not used by the council vehicles, or forestry because it is too narrow. However, when the waterworks were being built over forty years ago, the residents protested and promises were made by Tipperary County Council to fix and maintain this road also. Resident Michael O’Brien explains how the road needed repairing before the waterworks were built in the 1980s but all promises to maintain the road have been broken.
“When the waterworks was being placed up there we protested as we didn’t want it. We went into a meeting with the council and they promised us that they would maintain the road to a high standard but that has never happened,” said Michael.
“Before the waterworks opened we threatened to block the road when the Minister was opening the waterworks. The council, avoiding this situation, sent someone out to do a patch/temporary job on the road with promises to come back and do a proper job - but they never did,” said Michael.
Currently this road is impassable with pot-holes over 1-meter wide, fallen ditches and verges that has created a miserable quality of life for the residents of ten residential properties. Each time the pot-holes appears, the road is patched but there is an even more dangerous issue with a collapsed ditch near resident Maureen O’Connell’s home.
The road in front of senior citizen’s Maureen O’Connell’s home is horrendous and the verge has collapsed.
“I’m often afraid to leave my home in my car in fear of getting stuck or having an accident due to the potholes. Services are called out all the time to drag people out of the verge. A man ran into the ditch in his car and he was so stuck that the AA services failed to pull him out,” said Maureen.
MOTORWAY
Resident Patsy Quirke explained that last year she had an engineer out to fit her home with a security system. “His car got stuck on the way out and he was there until 7pm that night before the services could pull him out. The road is in such a state that it’s really really dangerous. A serious accident or injury is just waiting to happen. Kids will be tossed off their bikes, Walkers will be injured and I can’t even walk down my own road. I rang the council and they just send out men with shovels to patch it,” she said.
“I don’t understand why are we paying road tax? If you add up the amount of residents using this road and multiply that by the amount of car tax they have paid in the last 40 years we would have enough money to build a motorway.”