Council needs more input on road works, says councillor

Fianna Fáil councillor JK Onwumereh has said that an audit is needed on how much Fingal County Council are spending on road improvements.

At this week’s meeting of Fingal County Council, the Blanchardstown–Mulhuddart councillor questioned whether the annual €30 million budget for road repair and maintenance afforded to the council represented value for money.

Onwumereh said, “like many of us here, I have seen several roads in the Dublin 15 area that were recently built, but have started to break down; as a public rep, it can be very disheartening to receive a report about poor road conditions and the damage it causes to the cars of residents.”

“There is also the inconvenience caused of roads being closed when repairs are being done,” he added, and said that the council needed to strike a balance between roads being closed and the council making sure that the council’s roads budget was being spent as efficiently as possible.

The Fianna Fáil councillor said that €30 million is a “big chunk” of the council’s overall annual budget, and that he said the money should be “justified” by value for money.

He asked if the council had professionals who could “stand over” the quality of Fingal County Council’s roads, and questioned how Fingal’s roads compared to other roads across Ireland.

Sinn Féin councillor Angela Donnelly said that the operations department does “great work” maintaining Dublin’s roads, and said that the team “worked really really quick” to repair potholes in Dublin 15 in the winter.

“I look at paths and roads – it’s one of those things you can’t unsee once you’re a councillor – and the standards of roads are very good in Fingal,” she said.

Donnelly’s council colleague, Malachy Quinn, said “the work done by Fingal County Council on roads is fair beyond the expectations of other councils across Ireland.”

The Swords councillor noted that the challenge came from when utility companies carry out repair works, and said “I’d like to think we could work, as a council, can chase up these utility companies.”

Quinn said that the companies “make an arse of an elbow” and the council were the ones to foot the bill after the fact.

Fellow Dublin 15 councillor John Walsh noted that extensive works were carried out in the local area, pointing to works on Castleknock Road being resurfaced through night works.

The Labour councillor said there are “significant issues,” in older housing estates, and said that was an area where works can be improved.

Walsh agreed with Quinn’s estimation of utility companies; he noted that an electrical contractor carried out work in the Dublin 15 area to lay down fibre wires for a data centre, but it took upwards of a year for the works to be completed.

He said that in this instance, local residents were inconvenienced by the works, and said that the council needed greater powers to chase up utility companies.

“That’s not really acceptable, and we need a quicker, more effective mechanism of bringing utility companies to book; they have plenty of money, they are benefiting heavily from state support, and they are being facilitated to do these works; they need to do the reinstatements in a timely way,” Walsh told the meeting.

Fianna Fáil councillor Eoghan O’Brien said that a similar experience happened in his constituency of Howth-Malahide.

O’Brien told the meeting that Uisce Eireann carried out works in his area, and replaced a concrete footpath with tarmac.

“I’m not someone who should be let near a hammer, but I could have done a better job myself,” he remarked.

O’Brien implied there was no accountability whenever the council hires a private company to carry out works on their behalf.

“Where’s the post inspection in that instance? I don’t think it’s effective; we need to be turning to utility companies and saying you are leaving roads in our areas in a poor condition. We should be saying you aren’t getting a license until you can prove that you can operate properly.”

O’Brien said “it’s absolutely clear that a majority of utility companies are not reinstating the roads and pavements properly. From the outside looking in, it doesn’t look like we are doing anything to enforce that,” he said.

Independent councillor Dean Mulligan said that decisions on road conditions were “taken out of the council’s hands” and that the council should have a greater say on road operations.

“We’ve seen a lot of decisions taken out of our hands, and the decisions haven’t been made by the council,” he noted.

“On a national level, and a local authority level, we need to be able to not foot the bill for certain roads that are in disarray.”

Mulligan said, “there are a lot of new developments in our county, but there are a huge amount of roads in disarray; I know when I bring the issue to the council we do what we can, but the budget far outweighs the operational budget to make these roads what they need to be.”

Green councillor David Healy said that the council needs to “look at various aspects” of road maintenance.

He noted that in 2022, the council passed a motion which folded in improvements to walking and cycling infrastructure into the maintenance program, but not much work has been done to make it a reality.

“We’ve had experience of his not really working out,” he noted.

Healy explained that the council receives proposals for road maintenance or improvement projects in December or January of each year, but said that the list of projects is not shared with the public in advance.

“If we can make this data available, the better it would be for our credibility,” he said.

Sinéad Murphy, Director of Operations at Fingal County Council, explained that oversight was dependent on the kind of road being built.

“If it were a larger project, like the Donabate distributor road, we would have our own team there on site to make sure it’s being built to specification,” she explained, but said that in the case of smaller works, such as footpath works, there is a “slightly different procedure,” and the council has no direct oversight of a project of that nature.

Onwumereh said there has been a “mixed state of reactions” to the state of Fingal’s roads.

“Ultimately, I agree with our colleagues that our operations staff are on the ball when it comes to fixing roads, but I am really keen on ensuring that the right job is done in the first instance.”

The Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart councillor said “ultimately, we need to put an additional, proper check in place to make sure that we aren’t spending extra money where we need to.”