Roads and bridges in north Louth 'severely damaged'
Cllr Antóin Watters speaking ahead of Tuesday night’s Dundalk Municipal District meeting
Roads and bridges in north Louth are “severely damaged” following last week’s unprecedented flooding and Louth County Council has to ‘triage’ the repairs, Sinn Féin councillor Antóin Watters has said.
The Dundalk-Carlingford councillor was speaking ahead of Tuesday night’s Dundalk Municipal District meeting which is expected to be dominated by the flooding, the council’s response to it and the plans for fixing the damage.
After the initial work of helping to prevent further flood damage to homes and businesses in the early part of last week, Cllr. Watters visited a large number of homes and businesses affected by the flooding on Saturday, accompanied by Sinn Féin TD, Ruairí Ó Murchú.
The pair saw the “huge scale” of the damage after the flood waters receded, with many roads and bridges destroyed.
Cllr. Watters said: “After the initial frenetic work of trying to help on the ground, Deputy Ó Murchú and I returned to North Louth on Saturday to see the huge amount of damage that has been done.
“We spoke to homeowners and saw for ourselves the devastation that the floods had left. There is significant damage to the Turf Road, Edentubber; to the Park Road, the Deer Park, Ballymakellet and Annaverna Road in Ravensdale. There are still some houses isolated because of the damage that has been done to the roads and bridges’.
“In Lordship and Jenkinstown, roads have been left compromised, especially at Beck’s Lane and at the trails around the mountain roads.
“There has also been damage to roads at Benagh and Riverstown and the bridge at Castletowncooley has been destroyed. At Rathcor, a road leading down to the beach is impassable and also damage at Ballaverty and Earlsquarter.
“There is damage to roads at Mountain Park and at North and South Commons in Carlingford, as well as at Tullagh in Omeath’.
Unfortunately, there are still other areas that I need to view over the next few days as the scale of the repairs are colossal.
Cllr. Watters said the council must now move to prioritise opening the roads and fixing the bridges, and he is asking for temporary repairs to be carried out ‘to get the infrastructure open again’ ahead of a focus on longer-term repairs.
He says he is planning to raise the issue, along with other councillors, at Tuesday’s municipal district meeting in Dundalk. He said: “We want to know the council’s plan of attack and how they are going to prioritise or triage the work that needs to be done”.