'We need infrastructure': Kilcully locals protest at City Hall calling for road safety measures

RESIDENTS from Kilcully and Ballincrokig braved the rain to protest outside City Hall yesterday, prior to last night’s Cork City Council meeting, over a lack of progress in road safety measures in their locality.

The residents presented a petition to Lord Mayor Kieran McCarthy, who promised to hand it over to the executive.

“I sympathise, and I’m not blind to what you’re trying to do,” he told them.

Residents alleged that ringfenced funding that they were promised three years ago seems to have disappeared, and highlighted how dangerous the area was.

“There were three accidents one week,” Trish Moynihan told The Echo.

Meanwhile, Trisha Carroll said: 

“Years ago we were told the funding was there for footpaths, pedestrian crossings, lights — and now nobody knows where it is.”

In 2022, €400,000 was allocated by the National Transport Authority (NTA), under active travel investment grants, to the ‘Kilcully and Upper Glanmire Pedestrian Improvement Scheme’ set to include the provision of 1.6km of new footpaths, a new pedestrian bridge crossing the Glennamought River, a raised pedestrian crossing and 43 new public lighting columns.

“We are just 3.5km from Patrick St and we have no public transport, no pedestrian crossings, no footpaths,” said Kilcully and Ballincrokig Residents Association chairperson Joan Lewis.

“All they’re doing is building houses — and we have no problem with the houses, we want the houses — but we need the infrastructure to go with them.”

“We cannot allow for these areas to be forgotten about — there is a fair amount of disparity out there,” added Sinn Féin candidate in the upcoming local elections Mandy O’Leary Hegarty, “so we would be hoping that with a new council in June these things would change”.

Gráinne O’Donnell explained that the area has a huge problem with speeding drivers, and that people had seen “horrific” incidents.

She welcomed the large turnout for the protest.

“Especially with the weather, and the fact that it’s not the biggest of areas, it’s great to see so many come out,” she said.

“The Upper Glanmire and Kilcully schemes were both approved separately by Cork City Council, but from a funding perspective, they’re being treated as one,” said Cork City North East Green Party councillor Oliver Moran.

“The Upper Glanmire scheme is being treated as Phase 1 and the Kilcully scheme as Phase 2. I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it.

“There are other schemes in the city that are Phase 1 and Phase 2 of each other, where they naturally lead on from each other.

“In the case of Kilcully and Upper Glanmire, the two schemes don’t join, they’re not planned to, and they’re 4km apart,” he said.

Adding that the Upper Glanmire scheme is under way, he said: “There’s a pressing need for road safety in Kilcully, with a significant number of serious incidents.

“It should be prioritised and funded in its own right, separately from the Upper Glanmire scheme.”