Road by former soup kitchen an ‘embarrassment’ due to potholes

A ROAD leading to a major tourist attraction in Skibbereen is an embarrassment, pockmarked with ‘not potholes, but craters’.

That is the view of local resident Billy Barry, who expressed his frustration to The Southern Star about the state of the road beside the Steam Mill leading to the award-winning Heritage Centre.

‘I myself park there every morning and it is extremely embarrassing to see tourists attending the Heritage Centre or tourists staying in the hotel expressing their shock at the condition of the road,’ he said.

Originally built in the 1840s, the Steam Mill building is synonymous with the Great Famine and it was one of Ireland’s first large-scale purpose-built soup kitchens.

Cork County Council entered into an agreement to purchase the building in 2015, and said it has plans to restore it in the future.

But Mr Barry said visitors to Skibbereen now read about The Famine on billboards ‘but the Mill itself is in such dreadful condition’.

‘The road itself contains not potholes, but craters, which tourists complain about when they park their rental cars or a tourist bus pulls up and the tourists are likely to disappear down such craters as they attempt to alight.

‘One tourist approached me as I took the photos and said that the road would surely have been in a better condition during the time of the famine.’

In recent days there was an amount of ‘patching’ of the site undertaken, but Billy isn’t impressed with the temporary aspect of the repairs work. ‘This is only pothole filling, sealing and patching. The filling is already loosening,’ said Billy.

He believes the Council is waiting until there is funding to carry out renovations on the adjacent Steam Mill. ‘But that could be years away,’ he said.

New county mayor Cllr Joe Carroll has previously highlighted the frustration of Cork County Council with the roads budget, and says that ensuring that Cork Co Council is adequately funded by central government is a key priority.

The former acting chief executive of the Council, Valerie O’Sullivan, said Council staff were frustrated with the lack of response from central government when the discrepancies in funding for Cork roads, as opposed to other counties, were pointed out to them.