COLUMN: Airwaves filled with talk of Tipperary Town traffic issues

I got a call on Monday morning, January 30 from someone saying I had kicked a hornets’ nest with my column in The Nationalist on January 26, 2023, entitled: “Tipperary Town is one of the worst places in all of Ireland to drive through”.

The person rang me after they spent around 20 minutes listening to TippFM’s Tipp Today show. Another person, who heard the show also and drives through Tipperary Town every day, said: “The truth hurts.”

The lead story on the programme on Monday morning, January 30, was a local councillor taking issue with my column in The Nationalist the Wednesday before.

Councillor Michael Fitzgerald had posted on Facebook taking issue with the “unfair” language used to describe Tipp Town traffic. It’s worth pointing out that I put Cllr Fitzgerald’s Facebook statement up on tipperarylive.ie on Friday, January 27 with the headline: “Councillor hits back over ‘unfair’ column in The Nationalist on traffic in Tipp Town”.

Prior to the show on Monday, TippFM did ask me several times to discuss the column on air but anyone who can remember my time in TippFM and on the airwaves, probably knows that I’m better off just not speaking on radio.

Fran Curry, the show’s presenter, is a wonderful broadcaster and broad the requisite balance to the discussion with Cllr Fitzgerald, who was brought on to talk about his Facebook rebuttal to my column.

Most notably, he told the councillor that there was a fair degree of truth to the article, to which Cllr Fitzgerald agreed.

The issue again dominated the airwaves on Wednesday morning and what struck me during that discussion was when someone remarked that I’m probably half regretting writing the column at all.

That’s not the case.

I’m glad I wrote it, it was my experience of driving through the town.

Debate, discussion and column inches dedicated to an issue should not be discouraged just because you don’t agree with the person’s viewpoint or how they’ve expressed it.

And for a councillor to suggest that I didn’t have to go through the town to get to Kilmallock is just bizarre. Surely, people should be encouraged to drive through a town/village so that they might spend a little in the area.

Ultimately, the traffic in Tipp Town is a huge issue and that’s the general consensus, even from listening to TippFM last week.

That’s not me taking away from all the good work being done in the area.

We dedicate a page to all the good work every week, wonderful stories all written by local correspondent Martin Quinn.

But one would wonder, why hasn’t the traffic issue been addressed?

Some councillors have had many years, decades even, as elected officials to help address the traffic and it’s still a “nightmare” and a “disgrace”.