‘Fill the potholes and let’s go from there’ – Mayo councillors seek one-year goodwill gesture from council
Councillors in the Westport and Belmullet Municipal District have backed a proposal calling on Mayo County Council to carry out pothole repairs on former Local Improvement Scheme (LIS) roads.
The proposal was described as a ‘one-year-only gesture of goodwill’ for residents living on private roads that had previously been maintained by LIS funding, but have since fallen into disrepair.
Cllr Chris Maxwell raised the issue at the district council's January meeting. He said many of the roads had been tarred and maintained for years under the LIS scheme, leading residents to believe they had been taken over by the council.
However, he explained that there had been a widespread misunderstanding about the ownership of the roads, which has come to light now that potholes are appearing and the roads are no longer on the LIS funding list.
“[People] weren’t aware, many of them assumed that once the roads were tarred, that they were council roads and they would be looked after,” he said.
Cllr Maxwell explained that residents regularly approach him to point out that they pay road tax and local property tax, but are now living with roads full of potholes.
He proposed that “out of a goodwill gesture”, the council should go out and fill the potholes for this year.
“It would give people hope, show them they are not forgotten about and show them that some of their road tax and local property tax is doing some good for them,
“Fill the potholes. That’s all. Fill the potholes and let go from there,” he added.
The proposal was supported by Cllr Brendan Mulroy “for this year and this year alone”.
“I’ve seen roads that were presumed to be taken over, I’ve seen letters written to people by former politicians, years ago, not in recent times, to say the road was taken over - the roads were never taken over, and it has created a problem,” he said.
The discussion took place against a backdrop of ongoing concerns around LIS funding in Mayo. It was reported last year that approximately €200,000 from the 2024 round of LIS funding was returned to the Government after the council did not spend its full allocation.
At the time, there was uproar among councillors, who pointed out that many of them had long lists of roads in their municipal districts that were in desperate need of funding for maintenance work.
In the meeting, councillors highlighted the increasing cost of road maintenance works and proposed writing to the Department of Rural and Community Affairs to quadruple the funding allocation for the next round.
Cllr Paul McNamara said his LIS allocation has not increased over the years, despite inflation in labour and material costs.
“Last year, we got about €22,000 per councillor to look after the LIS roads we were dealing with. At any given time, I had between 10 and 12 [LIS] applications in the system,” he said.
He told the meeting that one road in his Achill constituency would cost €75,000 to fix and said the only way the LIS scheme could become workable was through increased Government funding.
“In a lot of places where these LIS roads are, there used to be a Gaeltacht grant. That grant is no longer available, and an awful lot of roads in the rural gaeltacht areas were done through [those] applications,” he explained.
The former Scéim na mBóithre Portaigh (Bog Road Scheme), later replaced by the Scéim Bóithre Pobail (Community Road Scheme), provided funding for improvements to rural roads in Gaeltacht areas.
Cllr Sean Carey said the pothole proposal “makes sense”, and called on the council to write to the department to “request a quadruple of last year's funding allocation”.
He said the number of LIS applications far exceeded the funding available and also called for the reinstatement of the former Gaeltacht grants. Both proposals were seconded.
“If I was to live to be 120, they wouldn’t get done,” said Cllr John O’Malley, who stated that councillors would need “at least €100,000” each to address the backlog of LIS roads.
“It’s down to the Government to allocate more money - that is the bottom line on this. They have money for every bloody thing, you see them there wasting money, and they won’t give it to the rural people that need it,” he added.
Cllr Mulroy also highlighted what he described as the “elephant in the room” - disagreements between neighbours on whether a road should be taken over.
“I would say the majority of roads we are talking about are because of that reason. I have seen applications going in one morning ready to tar the road, and then there has been a fallout and money has to be redirected,” he said.
Councillors agreed there was no easy solution, but said the proposed ‘one-year-only’ pothole repairs would provide a short-term fix to residents while allowing time to work towards a long-term solution.
This article has been funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.