Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being present and the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this particular issue regarding what is described as a rampart road. Such a road is built on peat, is raised, and has the unfortunate habit of deteriorating very quickly in a short space of time. This road is in a very historic area. It runs from the location where I hold my clinic, which we politicians have to do on a regular basis, from the historic location at Ballagh in Donadea. It is now Connolly's pub; it used to be Taaffe's. The road goes westward from there, past another historic place, Roche's pub. I do not spend my time travelling to all the pubs but the road passes them. It goes past Roche's pub and continues for another three or four miles almost to Timahoe.

The problem is that the road is now in a dangerous condition. This is not due to potholes. There are no potholes and the surface is smooth but every foot or yard there is a massive depression where the road has subsided. Anyone travelling more than 30 mph is in danger of overturning their car. The road is in a dangerous condition.

These obstacles are to be found every yard. If you get five yards without such an obstruction, you are very lucky, so the road is dangerous and is getting worse. The reason it has got so bad so quickly is that it delivers a lot of heavy traffic, there has been a lot of investment in the immediate area, which is in the middle of the countryside, and a lot of jobs arising from that. There is a lot of transport traffic necessitated by the location of those jobs in the area. The important thing, however, is that we register the message in whatever quarter is relevant of the need to do something about this to address the condition of the road in the next fortnight or three weeks at the latest because something will happen. There will be an accident and it can be averted if we deal with it now.

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