Fermoy local electoral area: Town is ‘choked with traffic’ and that is biggest challenge for retailers

Fermoy is bustling at the moment, but that is a blessing which has a serious downside, with traffic congestion being a chronic problem in the town.

Fermoy was bypassed in 2006, but the toll at Watergrasshill has long proven a point of controversy and, with goods vehicles currently paying €4 and cars €2.30, some locals believe it has resulted in cars and lorries bypassing the bypass, leaving the M8 and driving through the town as a way of saving money.

For all of that, few in the town believe the toll is the only reason for Fermoy’s issues with traffic, and Cork County Council points out that “current traffic volumes are nowhere near the levels that were experienced passing through the town prior to the opening of the M8 motorway”.

Some in the town had proposed a relief road be built to the south east of Fermoy, on lands partially owned by Cork County Council, and local Fine Gael county councillor Noel McCarthy had tabled a motion at a March 2022 Fermoy Municipal District meeting asking that the council considered the feasibility of such a plan.

Others suggested a further development of that idea, proposing a bridge running to the east of Kent Bridge, spanning the river from Pike Road to the south bank. Neither proposal amounted to anything.

With a new Tesco due to be built on the old Barry’s Timber Yard site near the town hall, off the N72 Courthouse Road end of the town, Fermoy’s traffic looks set to surely worsen.

Paul Kavanagh, executive director at McCarthy Insurance Group and project manager with Fermoy Tidy Towns, suggested what appears, on the face of it, to be a perfect solution to the town’s traffic problems.

“Get rid of the toll to come into Fermoy. Let them stay on the motorway, let them get on and off, without any charge, and that will be cheaper than any bridge.”

He conceded that the plan would need a lot of work to ascertain the financial implications of the Government buying out Direct Route’s contract on the toll road, which has approximately another decade to run, but he suggested it might prove cheaper than building a new bridge.

Pat Morrissey is manager of the Synergy Credit Union and chair of the Fermoy Forum.

He said Fermoy had been awarded approximately €2.2m in funding for regeneration but action was needed to see that funding drawn down to affect actual change.

“Many areas of the town have huge potential and we would love to see that realised,” he said.

Mr Morrissey instanced the site of the former mart in the centre of Fermoy, as well as the vacant former IDA site on the edge of town, as areas in need of regeneration and he pointed to the need for a hotel in Fermoy as a long-standing issue.

“Housing is an issue in Fermoy, like everywhere else, but I believe we have seen some good developments in this area.

“The Cork County Development Plan notes that we need approximately 700 new houses by 2028 to keep up with population growth.

“That will be a tough ask, but I believe we are on the right track,” he said.

One well-established Fermoy retailer offers their thoughts on the town’s traffic. They asked to remain anonymous.

IF YOU’RE a retailer in Fermoy, the weather is your first enemy, but there’s nothing you can do about that. After the weather, the number-one challenge facing businesses in the town is a combination of traffic and parking.

Traffic is back to pre-covid levels and working from home seems to be a thing of the past, with everyone back on the road, and the town is choked with traffic.

Congestion is a desperate problem in Fermoy, and we’re at the stage where school times aren’t even so much the biggest problem anymore.

People are left stuck in their cars and they can’t get through the town. Part of the problem is multiple sets of traffic lights.

Road rage is definitely on the rise, which is a ridiculous thing to say in a town the size of Fermoy.

Some people have suggested that a relief road is needed to the east of the town, and there has been talk of a second bridge, running across the river from the bottom of the Pike Road on the northern bank to the bottom of Mill Island on the south.

There was a suggestion of a relief road on the southeast of the town, running between the bank of the river and the Tallow road, but that seems to have been shot down.

The doughnut effect is definitely an issue in Fermoy, with customers being drawn to outlets on the edge of town. Food courts and multiples are pulling business out of the town, and most people would say that the middle of town is just something that is in their way.

We are probably looking at an additional 1,000 new builds over the next five years and you only have to look at the existing housing estates to see they are all crammed with cars. If the town is to grow, then we need to have a working traffic plan.

There seems to be no one looking on an official level at how the town is completely clogged with cars. This could be a beautiful place to work and do business and live, but could we please get going with some kind of traffic plan?

A spokesperson for Cork County Council said its northern committee had recently discussed increased traffic levels in Fermoy.

“Cork County Council has committed to discussing the feasibility of carrying out a traffic survey for Fermoy town with Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), subject to the necessary funding being put in place by TII.

“It should be acknowledged that there are currently two bridge crossings at Fermoy (M8 and N72) and that there are no proposals to develop any additional crossings.

“The outcome of any traffic study and associated recommendations will be considered in the context of improved traffic management flow utilising existing bridge assets to their optimum capacity.”

New arrivals have thrown themselves into volunteering

THE town made international headlines last year when a participant in the Big Red Chair section of the Graham Norton Show described Fermoy as a “horrible, horrible town”, and it was the local Tidy Towns committee that weighed in to defend the area’s honour.

A Scottish native called Zoe had lived in Ireland for 20 years and had, evidently, not enjoyed her time in the town founded by her countryman John Anderson. When word of Zoe’s remarks reached Noel McCarthy, who is chairman of the Fermoy Tidy Towns committee, he said he was “horrified” and he pointed out that the town had twice won IBAL Cleanest Town.

The following week, Mr Norton apologised, and, perhaps with tongue in cheek, the Bandon native added: “Fermoy did win the cleanest town in Ireland in 2007 and 2018, so I’d imagine it’s still quite clean. Big up to Fermoy.”

Like many Tidy Towns projects around the country, Fermoy’s group has been rejuvenated in recent years by new arrivals to the town.

Two years ago, volunteers cleaning the old promenade on the northern bank of the Blackwater were joined in their work by newly arrived Ukrainian refugees staying in the former Grand Hotel. Many of those people have now put down roots in the town, moving on to full-time work, and some still make the time to volunteer.

Over the past year, they have been joined by volunteers from even further afield and some locals say people seeking international protection in the town have “thrown themselves” into volunteering to make their new home a better place.

Paul Kavanagh said the new arrivals had made a big difference to the work the volunteers do.

“They’re enthusiastic, they’re hard workers, and they have a huge pride in their new home, and they really have lifted all of us. It’s great to see that sense of pride, and they’ve really helped us in the Tidy Towns,” he said.

Not everyone in Fermoy has been happy to see new arrivals in the town, and there were ugly scenes in November 2022 when 63 people seeking international protection, 25 of them children, arrived at a newly opened accommodation centre at the former St Joseph’s Convent on Fermoy’s southside.

A group of some 80 people, many of them veterans of anti-immigrant protests around the country, gathered outside the centre and subjected those arriving to intimidation and verbal abuse.

Three days later, some 300 local people attended a demonstration on the other side of town, across the river, outside the Church of Ireland, holding aloft banners reading “Refugees are Welcome”.

Chris O’Connell is part of a group of local volunteers who came together in the wake of the November 2022 incident.

“We wanted to show people arriving in the centre that Fermoy is a lovely place and the vast majority of people here are generous and welcoming,” she said.

“Initially, people arriving needed material support, and introductions to local sporting groups and voluntary groups like the Tidy Towns, but the support that people in the centre need has changed over the past 18 months, with most now working, and the only people not in jobs are single women with small children.”

Ms O’Connell said the current number of people living in St Joseph’s was 140 — 69 of them children.

Since November of last year, the conversion of a former B&B on the town’s northside into the town’s second international protection centre has been a source of some controversy.

For almost four months, a small group of people maintained a presence in a tent outside Abbeyville House in Brian Boru Square, objecting to the former B&B’s planned use as an accommodation centre for people seeking international protection.

Two weeks ago, some 52 people, approximately half of them children, arrived at Abbeyville under garda escort.

For Ms O’Connell, the new arrivals have enriched the town.

“When we [met them] initially, we thought we were helping them, but it is they who have helped us, changing the way we looked at our town and offering us their friendship,” she said.

“We are the ones who have benefitted from all they have done to make our town a better place to live.”

Meanwhile, Gráinne O’Connor of Crayon Creative has been instrumental in the development of Fermoy’s International Garden, which provides a welcome to local residents old and new in the heart of the town.

“Fermoy has it all, a picturesque location, a great selection of service providers, retailers, schools, activities and clubs,” Ms O’Connor said.

“Our civic and volunteering spirit is thriving.

“With a little more cross-community collaboration, there is no reason Fermoy could not be north Cork’s leading destination town to visit or live in.”