Councillors call for urgent action on North Cork footpath repairs

Cork County Council is only spending 0.03% of its budget on footpath repairs in parts of North Cork.

Councillors have called for urgent action to be taken to address the issue, highlighting Mallow where a number of elderly people have fallen and hurt themselves on the dire footpaths in its main street.

Mallow-based Labour councillor Ronan Sheehan said a pittance is being spent on new footpaths and repairing broken ones in the Kanturk/Mallow Municipal District area.

Fine Gael councillor Liam Madden said there are trip hazards all over Mallow, with some footpaths in “a diabolical state”.

Fianna Fáil councillor Pat Hayes said there are lot of lose bricks all over the place and water is coming up through them. His party colleague Gearoid Murphy, who chairs the municipal district, said urgent action is needed before some elderly person gets seriously injured.

Context

Mr Sheehan said the municipal district stretches from the Limerick border at Charleville right across to Duhallow, covering a large rural region with many towns and villages, all of which require safe and accessible pedestrian infrastructure.

“Yet the entire programme for 2025 amounted to just €161,276, delivering approximately 1.1km of repairs across eight locations," he said.

"To put that in context, Cork County Council operates with a budget of more than €0.5bn, meaning the footpath allocation for this entire municipal district represents roughly 0.03% of the council’s overall budget."

Mr Sheehan said the figure highlights the scale of the challenge as the council could easily spend 10 times this amount in the town of Mallow alone, and still have significant work left to do.

“Footpaths are not a luxury, they’re basic infrastructure that allows children to walk safely to school, older residents to access services, and people of all ages to move around their communities safely and independently. We are encouraging people to embrace active travel and healthier, more sustainable ways of getting around."

Not enough

“It’s not enough to promote walking if we’re not prepared to fund the infrastructure that supports it."

“Local authorities cannot address decades of underinvestment in pedestrian infrastructure with allocations of this scale. We must put our money where our mouth is and significantly increase funding for footpaths across rural and regional Ireland,” Mr Sheehan added.

Keith Jones, a senior council official, said consultants are currently looking at different options for all public realm improvements in Mallow and will report to councillors when it’s complete.