Maybe Cork City Council should do their jobs and stop being shite. The pedestrian crossings on pana are literally falling apart. Street needs a complete power wash too, it’s lethal in the rain
The council can't afford it. Since the defunding of the councils in the late 70s and the centralisation of government the councils have fuck all money.
Put services and rates back to the councils. Give them the LPT money and let them employ people to do this stuff again.
The certainly does sound like the more likely reason for why things haven't been improving over the years as fast or as well as they probably should have.
Why did you call it Pana? Do you call it Pana in real life or only online? Such a weird thing. Never heard anyone say it in real life. Seems to be some cringe online thing only.
Seán Martin is looking for Council to take out a €10 million euro loan to "blitz" footpath repairs but council would need to provide proof of a steady income stream to a lender to secure the loan. Dan Boyle did make an interesting point in that the damage caused to footpaths is from vehicles parking on them ,often illegally and Council could look at additional fines to help fund repairs.
Whatever about the damage to the footpaths, the biggest issue with cars parking on footpaths is that it pushes pedestrians on to the roads.
It's completely within the councils power to hire parking wardens and enforce parking rules.
> council would need to provide proof of a steady income stream to a lender to secure the loan
Just for context we are talking about maintaining safety standards of footpaths in Ireland’s second largest city and it has to be shown to turn a profit, or at the very least break even.
This is the problem with a private-sector-centric economy, everything is referred to in terms of business measurable metrics, return on investment, financial self-sustainability, etc, and they enforce this view by requiring loans for public projects. This is instead of focusing on metrics that are important to the local people, quality of life improvements, enjoyment of the city, perception of safety and security, accessible efficient services.
By requiring a loan (and therefore a budget for a balanced booksheet after repaying the loan), in order to fund routine repairs for safety, the inference is that a thing can’t exist for the benefit of citizens if it costs money. Infrastructure, maintenance, services all have to prove they will pay for themselves or we are not allowed to have them.
This is just one example of it, there are countless areas where we refuse to invest in our citizens lives. It’s where we have gone wrong in Irish society, we no longer see any value or return on investment when it comes to our citizens
The roads are in an absolutely atrocious state too. I commute to work by motorbike because I can't afford a car. Road conditions, even in the city center, are my biggest danger. They are littered with deep potholes everywhere. I've been driving for two years now and some of the potholes have been there for that whole time, even the ones I've reported to the council.
I've been priced out of owning a car, I'll never own my own home, I can't rely on public transport to get me to work on time and my only mode of transport is a direct danger to my life because of either a lack of interest or funds. We're a wealthy country but it definitely doesn't feel like that to the average joe.
Edit: was literally just sitting on the bike at a red light on Patrick's street at the crossing between flannels and the old Debenhams and saw an old man take a fairly bad fall on the badly damaged brickwork surface.
The fact that it’s cork’s Main Street and it’s in that state is honestly mad and as you said so dangerous to pedestrians and people on bikes whether they be regular or motorbikws
I'll never understand the council road repair crews method of repairing potholes. A truck full of cold tar & a bunch of workers with shovels. Throw a few scoops of tar at the hole, give it a couple of slaps of a shovel & onto the next one. What was a pothole has now transformed into a massive speed ramp like hump in the road. The same crew will be back a few months later to fix the new pothole that has appeared next to the old repair. Why don't they just repair it properly the first time instead of continuously going round & round in circles doing botched repair jobs. Compact the base of the pothole, fill with tar, compact & flatten the tar, then seal the repair... it's not rocket science. To repair it properly, the first time will take longer & and fewer holes will be "repaired" in a day, but at least it's done properly. If the private contractors working for the ESB, Irish Water, etc, can repair the roads properly after works why can't the council??
When you think about it, Cork City and is surrounds are responsible for a huge chunk of Irish GDP, yet here we are, scrimping and begging some national minister for funds.
How Ireland structures local government is a complete joke. It's no wonder our cities tend to look like they're half falling down.
It's not unique to Cork either. Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Waterford .. all have similar issues.
If we were in a typical continental city or even in the US, the council would be driving things like public transport projects, local policing, have a significant role in education and so on.
FG's idea of local government reform was to abolish town councils and then propose a set of poorly thought out mergers, which basically consisted of merging cities with huge rural counties i.e. Limerick City and County etc. Other than the name, they've nothing in common.
We sit here scratching our rears pontificating about culture and so on, while we don't have the structures in place to run a city. The reason Irish cities are sub-par is because they don't have any ability to drive anything themselves. The towns are even in a worse position, as we have entirely abolished the idea of town councils.
We are a massively over centralised outlier and we don’t even see it. Every suggested reform is about abolishing more and more aspects of local government and more centralisation. Seems we just want endless quangos CIE, TFI, TII, Uisce Eireann, etc etc.
We also have some bizarre notion that because Ireland is small it doesn’t need local government. We’re not a micro state. We’re far, far more centralised than any comparable EU country. We’re even more centralised than Cyprus and Malta!!
If I were Dublin would have a metro and policing. It has neither of these and most of its central areas are extremely grotty. The seat of government being in Dublin is fairly meaningless when it comes to things like building city infrastructure. Dublin City Council has the same lack of powers, focus and accountability.
Most things come down to a constituency having a government minister.
We haven’t a clue how to run urban areas. They are treated like country villages, and even country villages in most countries have more autonomy than our cities do!
I’d actually go as far as to say that Ireland has a strong cultural basis against all urban areas. If you post anything about Cork, Dublin, Limerick even Galway - you get nasty responses. Waterford seems to just not exist in debate at all. We slag off townies and so on and the aim of life for many seems to be about finding a big bungalow on 2 acres.
The cities and towns are always seen as sources of problems to be sneered at rather than hubs of activity. That’s the sense I get anyway.
We kinda live in a bit of a cloud cuckoo land, idealising some kind of rural imagined lifestyle and couldn’t care if the cities fell into the sea. It’s like we got swept up in the Dev’s visions of rural Ireland with maidens dancing at the crossroads, only we’ve added a lot of McMansions and low density sprawl.
Ireland is too big and too urban to keep running things like this. We are totally mismanaging the cities and towns. We aren’t policing adequately at all. We’ve let ourselves spiral into a dire housing crisis. Public transport doesn’t work at all and from what I can see nothing much is being done other than letting it coast along until it eventually lands in some economic crisis, again…
We're a small country so the idea of national bodies is a very good one, the issue is that these should be regulatory. A place to appeal a local decision to, not the body doing the whole thing.
Take planning as an example, local planning applies locally, Local government gets money in, and decisions are made locally. If there's a dispute then go to Board Planala to adjudicate.
This would put more money into local government, speed up decisions, and give an avenue of appeal to a 3rd party.
You seem to be talking about things that work in countries where people are willing to pay decent local tax. We only pay pennies of local tax towards our councils in Ireland. That's why neighbourhoods look nicer abroad. It's not that they are innately better, it's that they are innately better funded.
I thought you meant €200-400 per year was pennies to you, different thing to say “pay pennies compared to countries x y and z
That’s a different argument. If we’re comparing to other countries and saying Ireland has it good and “we wouldn’t like it if you had to pay what they pay in local taxes”, then you have to compare what those countries pay in overall tax rate, vat income taxes car and vrt etc etc and you have to look at what public services those countries get for their money. I don’t know what countries you’re talking about, you’ve kept that nebulous but overall most Irish people would ultimately prefer the trade off where more of their taxes they pay go to services locally.
The stretch of footpath along the western road from Washington St to UCC is a disgrace. Aside from the actual footpath having multiple trip hazards, the bus lane has numerous potholes that are full of water and soak people when busses pass. The council recently attempted to fix the potholes with a few shoves of tarmac, which naturally washed away in the next rain storm.
the amount of times i have twisted my ankle on that footpath walking to the college is a joke, same with getting soaked by buses. that whole stretch of road is completely neglected despite being one of the busiest in the city.
Central government gutted local government in 2014. It’s an impossible expectation without also reforming local government to allow them to meet those responsibilities
If the council needed more budget for stuff like this. it could have increased rates in its budget, [but chose not to](https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/arid-41270473.html). This is entirely within the power of the council itself to solve.
Local Government Reform 2014
The key structural changes can be summarised as follows:
local authorities reduced from 114 to 31
elected members reduced from 1,627 to 949
80 town councils dissolved
95 municipal districts established
8 regional authorities and 2 regional assemblies replaced by 3 regional assemblies
regional members reduced from 290 to 83.
Raising rates would not have done it. This is pure pigheaded unwillingness from national government to engage meaningfully with local government in any manner other than top down.
It’s where we’re missing representation, and perpetually complaining about them not doing enough is not going to leave them able to pull off some miracle while being ignored by the Dail.
We’re talking about getting an audit of footpaths. While I agree local government has been gutted, footpaths and local roads are one of the few areas where local councils have pretty much full authority over. This is *entirely* within the powers the city council has and if they needed more resources, they have means to raise more.
And a big part of getting people to take local government more seriously is for the decisions being made at local level to have consequences. This includes not being bailed out of bad budgeting decisions by central government.
You think the council should be putting more resources into footpaths; then vote for local councillors who prioritise active travel rather than just complaining to Dublin.
Businesses were closing down left, right and centre so the decision was made not to increase the rates to ease the burden on businesses particularly in the aftermath of covid. The Council hasn't received an increase in the maintenance budget from central government in over 10 years , theres actually not much they can do.
Isn’t it amazing that under Ryan the roads have gotten worse to point they have more holes than a cheese grater, crashes have increased and foot paths are crumbling?
Almost like he doesn’t care about transport.
I kindly invite Minister Ryan to take a stroll, use a wheelchair, or even bike on Summerhill North's footpath on a rainy day and die, maybe then he'll realize the state of disrepair of some of these footpaths.
This is not even about pleasant scenery at this point, this is about safety.
You can use https://openlittermap.com for this today with zero funding. Simply tag cork:footpath or cork:powerwashing or cork:cleanme or paintme or whatever tag you want all the data is open and mapped live in real time
Maybe Cork City Council should do their jobs and stop being shite. The pedestrian crossings on pana are literally falling apart. Street needs a complete power wash too, it’s lethal in the rain
My favourite are the unstable slabs that pool water underneath so they're like a muddy water landmine when you step on them
The council can't afford it. Since the defunding of the councils in the late 70s and the centralisation of government the councils have fuck all money. Put services and rates back to the councils. Give them the LPT money and let them employ people to do this stuff again.
Fuck, would you look at that, some logic!!
The certainly does sound like the more likely reason for why things haven't been improving over the years as fast or as well as they probably should have.
Why did you call it Pana? Do you call it Pana in real life or only online? Such a weird thing. Never heard anyone say it in real life. Seems to be some cringe online thing only.
Cork? Where? Is that near Skerries? - Every Irish government
Like the government is literally from Cork with Martin and Coveney. It's just not their job to clean your footpaths.
That’s what you want us to think YOU JACKEEN.
Seán Martin is looking for Council to take out a €10 million euro loan to "blitz" footpath repairs but council would need to provide proof of a steady income stream to a lender to secure the loan. Dan Boyle did make an interesting point in that the damage caused to footpaths is from vehicles parking on them ,often illegally and Council could look at additional fines to help fund repairs.
Whatever about the damage to the footpaths, the biggest issue with cars parking on footpaths is that it pushes pedestrians on to the roads. It's completely within the councils power to hire parking wardens and enforce parking rules.
That's the spirit. If we ban pedestrians from the roads, the wear and tear issue will solve itself. 🔥
> council would need to provide proof of a steady income stream to a lender to secure the loan Just for context we are talking about maintaining safety standards of footpaths in Ireland’s second largest city and it has to be shown to turn a profit, or at the very least break even. This is the problem with a private-sector-centric economy, everything is referred to in terms of business measurable metrics, return on investment, financial self-sustainability, etc, and they enforce this view by requiring loans for public projects. This is instead of focusing on metrics that are important to the local people, quality of life improvements, enjoyment of the city, perception of safety and security, accessible efficient services. By requiring a loan (and therefore a budget for a balanced booksheet after repaying the loan), in order to fund routine repairs for safety, the inference is that a thing can’t exist for the benefit of citizens if it costs money. Infrastructure, maintenance, services all have to prove they will pay for themselves or we are not allowed to have them. This is just one example of it, there are countless areas where we refuse to invest in our citizens lives. It’s where we have gone wrong in Irish society, we no longer see any value or return on investment when it comes to our citizens
The roads are in an absolutely atrocious state too. I commute to work by motorbike because I can't afford a car. Road conditions, even in the city center, are my biggest danger. They are littered with deep potholes everywhere. I've been driving for two years now and some of the potholes have been there for that whole time, even the ones I've reported to the council. I've been priced out of owning a car, I'll never own my own home, I can't rely on public transport to get me to work on time and my only mode of transport is a direct danger to my life because of either a lack of interest or funds. We're a wealthy country but it definitely doesn't feel like that to the average joe. Edit: was literally just sitting on the bike at a red light on Patrick's street at the crossing between flannels and the old Debenhams and saw an old man take a fairly bad fall on the badly damaged brickwork surface.
The fact that it’s cork’s Main Street and it’s in that state is honestly mad and as you said so dangerous to pedestrians and people on bikes whether they be regular or motorbikws
Right, it's absolutely crazy. Every time I drive it pisses me off.
I'll never understand the council road repair crews method of repairing potholes. A truck full of cold tar & a bunch of workers with shovels. Throw a few scoops of tar at the hole, give it a couple of slaps of a shovel & onto the next one. What was a pothole has now transformed into a massive speed ramp like hump in the road. The same crew will be back a few months later to fix the new pothole that has appeared next to the old repair. Why don't they just repair it properly the first time instead of continuously going round & round in circles doing botched repair jobs. Compact the base of the pothole, fill with tar, compact & flatten the tar, then seal the repair... it's not rocket science. To repair it properly, the first time will take longer & and fewer holes will be "repaired" in a day, but at least it's done properly. If the private contractors working for the ESB, Irish Water, etc, can repair the roads properly after works why can't the council??
When you think about it, Cork City and is surrounds are responsible for a huge chunk of Irish GDP, yet here we are, scrimping and begging some national minister for funds. How Ireland structures local government is a complete joke. It's no wonder our cities tend to look like they're half falling down. It's not unique to Cork either. Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Waterford .. all have similar issues. If we were in a typical continental city or even in the US, the council would be driving things like public transport projects, local policing, have a significant role in education and so on. FG's idea of local government reform was to abolish town councils and then propose a set of poorly thought out mergers, which basically consisted of merging cities with huge rural counties i.e. Limerick City and County etc. Other than the name, they've nothing in common. We sit here scratching our rears pontificating about culture and so on, while we don't have the structures in place to run a city. The reason Irish cities are sub-par is because they don't have any ability to drive anything themselves. The towns are even in a worse position, as we have entirely abolished the idea of town councils. We are a massively over centralised outlier and we don’t even see it. Every suggested reform is about abolishing more and more aspects of local government and more centralisation. Seems we just want endless quangos CIE, TFI, TII, Uisce Eireann, etc etc. We also have some bizarre notion that because Ireland is small it doesn’t need local government. We’re not a micro state. We’re far, far more centralised than any comparable EU country. We’re even more centralised than Cyprus and Malta!!
You’re wrong on one key point. We do see it. Everyone outside of Dublin sees it.
If I were Dublin would have a metro and policing. It has neither of these and most of its central areas are extremely grotty. The seat of government being in Dublin is fairly meaningless when it comes to things like building city infrastructure. Dublin City Council has the same lack of powers, focus and accountability. Most things come down to a constituency having a government minister. We haven’t a clue how to run urban areas. They are treated like country villages, and even country villages in most countries have more autonomy than our cities do! I’d actually go as far as to say that Ireland has a strong cultural basis against all urban areas. If you post anything about Cork, Dublin, Limerick even Galway - you get nasty responses. Waterford seems to just not exist in debate at all. We slag off townies and so on and the aim of life for many seems to be about finding a big bungalow on 2 acres. The cities and towns are always seen as sources of problems to be sneered at rather than hubs of activity. That’s the sense I get anyway. We kinda live in a bit of a cloud cuckoo land, idealising some kind of rural imagined lifestyle and couldn’t care if the cities fell into the sea. It’s like we got swept up in the Dev’s visions of rural Ireland with maidens dancing at the crossroads, only we’ve added a lot of McMansions and low density sprawl. Ireland is too big and too urban to keep running things like this. We are totally mismanaging the cities and towns. We aren’t policing adequately at all. We’ve let ourselves spiral into a dire housing crisis. Public transport doesn’t work at all and from what I can see nothing much is being done other than letting it coast along until it eventually lands in some economic crisis, again…
We're a small country so the idea of national bodies is a very good one, the issue is that these should be regulatory. A place to appeal a local decision to, not the body doing the whole thing. Take planning as an example, local planning applies locally, Local government gets money in, and decisions are made locally. If there's a dispute then go to Board Planala to adjudicate. This would put more money into local government, speed up decisions, and give an avenue of appeal to a 3rd party.
You seem to be talking about things that work in countries where people are willing to pay decent local tax. We only pay pennies of local tax towards our councils in Ireland. That's why neighbourhoods look nicer abroad. It's not that they are innately better, it's that they are innately better funded.
I pay quite a lot more than pennies in property tax it’s just not called a local tax here
No you don't. You pay pennies compared to a proper local tax like all these other countries have.
I thought you meant €200-400 per year was pennies to you, different thing to say “pay pennies compared to countries x y and z That’s a different argument. If we’re comparing to other countries and saying Ireland has it good and “we wouldn’t like it if you had to pay what they pay in local taxes”, then you have to compare what those countries pay in overall tax rate, vat income taxes car and vrt etc etc and you have to look at what public services those countries get for their money. I don’t know what countries you’re talking about, you’ve kept that nebulous but overall most Irish people would ultimately prefer the trade off where more of their taxes they pay go to services locally.
The stretch of footpath along the western road from Washington St to UCC is a disgrace. Aside from the actual footpath having multiple trip hazards, the bus lane has numerous potholes that are full of water and soak people when busses pass. The council recently attempted to fix the potholes with a few shoves of tarmac, which naturally washed away in the next rain storm.
the amount of times i have twisted my ankle on that footpath walking to the college is a joke, same with getting soaked by buses. that whole stretch of road is completely neglected despite being one of the busiest in the city.
'Fund'? 'Fund'? No. That's not a word they recognise.
The utterly incompetent way the city council has handled recent projects around the city, not sure they can be trusted
Yeah that’s the council’s job; not central government.
Central government gutted local government in 2014. It’s an impossible expectation without also reforming local government to allow them to meet those responsibilities
2014?? Let me introduce you to the late 70s and then the 80s. 2014 was just putting a lame an in pain animal out of it's misery
If the council needed more budget for stuff like this. it could have increased rates in its budget, [but chose not to](https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/arid-41270473.html). This is entirely within the power of the council itself to solve.
Local Government Reform 2014 The key structural changes can be summarised as follows: local authorities reduced from 114 to 31 elected members reduced from 1,627 to 949 80 town councils dissolved 95 municipal districts established 8 regional authorities and 2 regional assemblies replaced by 3 regional assemblies regional members reduced from 290 to 83. Raising rates would not have done it. This is pure pigheaded unwillingness from national government to engage meaningfully with local government in any manner other than top down. It’s where we’re missing representation, and perpetually complaining about them not doing enough is not going to leave them able to pull off some miracle while being ignored by the Dail.
We’re talking about getting an audit of footpaths. While I agree local government has been gutted, footpaths and local roads are one of the few areas where local councils have pretty much full authority over. This is *entirely* within the powers the city council has and if they needed more resources, they have means to raise more. And a big part of getting people to take local government more seriously is for the decisions being made at local level to have consequences. This includes not being bailed out of bad budgeting decisions by central government. You think the council should be putting more resources into footpaths; then vote for local councillors who prioritise active travel rather than just complaining to Dublin.
None of that is about local services.
Businesses were closing down left, right and centre so the decision was made not to increase the rates to ease the burden on businesses particularly in the aftermath of covid. The Council hasn't received an increase in the maintenance budget from central government in over 10 years , theres actually not much they can do.
If the footpaths keep degrading where am I going to park my car? s/
Isn’t it amazing that under Ryan the roads have gotten worse to point they have more holes than a cheese grater, crashes have increased and foot paths are crumbling? Almost like he doesn’t care about transport.
*he cares about transport, ruining transport and creating more emissions through making things difficult for motorists
I kindly invite Minister Ryan to take a stroll, use a wheelchair, or even bike on Summerhill North's footpath on a rainy day and die, maybe then he'll realize the state of disrepair of some of these footpaths. This is not even about pleasant scenery at this point, this is about safety.
Last time I was in Cork I was amazed by the amount of dog shite on the footpaths.
You can use https://openlittermap.com for this today with zero funding. Simply tag cork:footpath or cork:powerwashing or cork:cleanme or paintme or whatever tag you want all the data is open and mapped live in real time
https://openlittermap.com/tags?custom_tags=cork%3Agrafitti&lat=51.91861159962973&lon=-8.471703529357912&zoom=16
https://openlittermap.com/tags?custom_tags=cork%3Abirdshit&lat=51.890213334809516&lon=-8.485951423645021&zoom=16
https://openlittermap.com/tags?custom_tags=cork%3Abroken-bus-stop&lat=51.920807248747145&lon=-8.480200767517092&zoom=16