Almost 2,500 complaints about Cork city footpaths in six years

ALMOST 2,500 complaints about Cork’s footpaths have been made to Cork City Council over the last six years.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that between 2019 and May 1, 2024, 2,427 complaints about paths were made to the local authority.

Of these, 488 complaints were made in 2019; 483 complaints in 2020; 457 in 2021; 416 in 2022; 443 in 2023; and 140 for the first four months of 2024.

The data was provided to Social Democrats local election candidate for the Cork City South Central ward Pádraig Rice.

Mr Rice described the volume of complaints as “shockingly high” and said it was “a cause of real concern”.

Speaking to The Echo, Mr Rice said the funding allocation for footpaths is too low.

“The total annual budget for footpath repair for the entire city is just €200,000, this is nowhere near enough,” he said, calling for more money to be allocated in order to make repairs and upgrades possible on an ongoing basis.

“In too many parts of the city, the footpaths are in a state of disrepair, this is causing huge accessibility issues, particularly for people with physical disabilities, people with vision impairment and parents with buggies.

“People should be able to walk down the street without the fear of falling, but almost every day, I have met someone who has tripped or fallen,” he said.

A spokesperson for Cork City Council told The Echo that the figures provided “refers to footpath defects reported by the public and elected representatives over the last five years” through Cork City Council’s customer relationship management system.

“Many of the defects may have been reported by multiple people so the figures are likely to overestimate the actual number of individual defects,” the spokesperson said.

“These defects are then prioritised and repairs are then carried out within the available budgets of the roads operations division.”