Councillor launches petition to seek footpath audit in Cork city

A newly elected Cork City councillor has launched a petition calling on the local authority to carry out an independent audit of footpaths in the city and suburbs after both City Hall and Transport Eamon Ryan indicated that they would not fund such an examination.

Peter Horgan, the Labour Party councillor in Cork City South East, said that before he was elected this request for independent scrutiny of what he said was the dangerous state of the footpaths was refused but insisted that a mandate now existed for his demand.

“Basic transport is walking but so many people, be they young, old, require wheelchairs or are pushing buggies, find that the footpaths in Cork are simply crumbling away,” he said, adding that people in the suburbs were saying that they would not go to the city centre because of the state of the pavements.

“The City Council has indicated they could not fund an audit and the Minister for Transport has said he will not fund one either. This impacts Blackrock, Douglas, Beaumont, Ballinlough, Ballintemple, Togher, Mahon, Maryborough, Rochestown and the city centre itself and all across the northside too.

“It’s simply not good enough that funding cannot be allocated to conduct an independent audit for a clear, objective picture on the scale and cost of the repairs needed. We need to know exactly what’s required and cannot wait for the piecemeal repairs currently underway.”

The councillor launched a petition on change.org to allow people to get behind the campaign to put pressure on the council to carry out an audit and then get to work on carrying out the necessary repairs. He also said basic information, such as the actual length and extent of the footpath network, wasn’t known.

Earlier this year it came to light that the City Council allocates approximately €200,000 per year for the repair of footpaths while there were public liability claims totalling over €1m brought against the authority by people injured through trips and falls on the city’s footpaths between 2019-2023.

Mr Horgan pointed to an issue he noticed while attending the Pride Parade on Sunday. “On one side of Albert Road, the pavement is dipped to allow access for parents with buggies and wheelchair users but on the other side, the pavement has a very high kerb,” he said.