Cllr seeks update on ‘most dangerous bend’

A local councillor is to seek an update on safety reports carried out along a road regarded as among “the most dangerous” in Ireland.

Cllr Carmel Brady has been campaigning for measures to address the R188 linking Cavan to Cootehill, particularly the section of road at Rathkenny regarded as a “blackspot”.

The Fine Gael representative wants to know the status of the reports, for which €12,000 was allocated. Further analysis is also being carried out by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) as part of a “complete plan” feeding into the future development of the East/West Link project.

Cllr Brady’s appeal for information is all the more urgent as accidents continue to happen along the series of bends, including one in which a car landed on its roof towards the end of last month.

“The RSA are doing a complete plan for that road, and it is going to be included in it when it is done, but we haven’t got a timeline and that desperately needs to happen.”

She intends to raise the matter with the council’s executive at the September monthly meeting next Monday, September 12, and continue to press the matter in the months to come.

“Nothing has changed, accidents are still continuing to happen. A lot of very serious accidents have happened already and it is only by the grace of God we’re not talking about a fatality here. So this needs to happen, especially looking into the winter months as well. It’s not good enough to simply ignore the fact there is a very serious problem along this road.”

Since 2015 the series of bends just after Rathkenny village has reportedly been the scene of 16 accidents or incidents.

Cllr Brady said her “plight” and that of other locals was “not a new issue” and dated back over 15 years, to when a local man driving to work at the Univet Factory in Tullyvin died when his car hit an ESB pole.

More than €2 million has been spent over the past decade and a half assessing the corridor connecting Dundalk and Sligo, and running through a large section of Cavan. First mooted over two decades ago, little progress has been made since, and the project received a further knock-back when dropped in 2005 by the then National Roads Authority (NRA) who did not see the road as a priority for the region.

A further €130,000 was allocated in more recent years to allow for further preparatory work, with Dublin-based Roughan and O’Donovan Consulting Engineers engaged by Cavan County Council - as lead authority on the project- to conduct a preliminary appraisal in late 2018.

This included reporting on sections of the R188 between Cavan Town and Cootehill; the R192 connecting Cootehill and Shercock; the R162 from Kingscourt to Shercock; and the R178 from Shercock to Carrickmacross and onto to Dundalk.