Opinion: between two bridges, a community fights for safer future

As a journalist, I attend a lot of events in one form or another. However, it’s rare that you feel that you’re witnessing a moment of real and palpable change.

On Monday last, I think I saw just such a moment.

It was in the Rhu Glenn - one of those rural hotels that are well known as somewhere to eat and as a venue for country singers and jiving evenings.

It’s situated on the N25 between Glenmore and Slieverue and is at the very heart of the community in south Kilkenny.

And that same N25 was the focus of the meeting. Specifically, a 6km stretch between Murphy’s Motors - a well-known agricultural machinery dealers - and the Luffany roundabout in Slieverue.

If you’ve ever passed that road, your eye will have caught the display of machinery in the field across from Murphy’s garage, at the top of a hill.

As a child, it was one of the many landmarks on the road from home in Ferns to my mother’s home place in Bantry, as we would wind our way across the country in a Volkswagen Beetle for our summer holiday.

The Luffany roundabout is the one that splits off left for Belview Port, straight ahead for Waterford city, with the third exit to the new Waterford bypass road.

The road links two dual carriageways - the aforementioned Waterford bypass, with the New Ross bypass. And it has become a dangerous bottleneck - busy, hilly and lethal.

Local lives lost

Twelve people have lost their lives on this 6,200 metres of road in the last 20 years. Seven of those have been in the last decade, three of those locals.

And the community has risen up and demanded action. Six-hundred people crammed into the Rhu Glenn on Monday.

They want the speed limit immediately reduced from 100km/h to 80km/h. They want hedges cut back to improve visibility.

They want improvements to slip roads on the many exit points. They want speed cameras to capture average speed on this stretch of road.

And they want better lighting and traffic calming measures on the last, critical stretch from the Rhu Glenn to the Luffany roundabout.

Three rivers, three counties

The heel of south Kilkenny is an interesting geographical area. Nestled between the Barrow and Suir rivers, it’s a strong farming area.

You have Glanbia’s giant new dairy processing plant in Belview, which is in Kilkenny. There are two beef processing plants adjacent to Waterford city - Dawn Granagh and APB Waterford. Both, to my knowledge, are also in County Kilkenny - just.

And across the banks of the Barrow (which by now has subsumed the River Nore) stands New Ross Mart.

Officially known as Waterford Ross Co-op Mart, it actually lies on the western bank of the Barrow-Rosbercon. However, it is part of a small foothold Wexford county has on the western side of the river, so lies on Wexford soil.

A lot of kids from south Kilkenny go to secondary school in New Ross or one of the schools in Waterford city.

Just as the three sisters rivers are connected forever, so are the three counties that populate this part of the southeast.

So it was that Waterford, Wexford and Kilkenny politicians were present last Monday. Indeed, Carlow woman Catherine Callaghan was also present, as she is the Fine Gael TD for Carlow-Kilkenny.

Senior gardai from the Waterford division spoke from the floor and Kilkenny County Council CEO Lar Power sat at the top table (and in the firing line).

When a group of people come together in Ireland to push for change on a single issue, there is often a county focus attached.

The 'Save Leitrim' campaign to slow the growth of afforestation, particularly blanket commercial planting of Sitka spruce in the county, was a classic example.

But the gathering in the Rhu Glenn had an eclectic mix of people across three counties, accurately reflecting the area.

Europe’s longest road

The N25 extends from Rosslare Port to Cork city. In total, it’s about 184km long. It has recorded more deaths than any other single road in the country, 22 in the stretch between 2017 and 2022 alone.

It’s actually the first part of Europe’s longest thoroughfare, the E30. That runs from Cork to Rosslare, resumes in Wales, along the M4 to London and, having crossed the English channel, makes its way to Moscow via the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Belarus.

Your E30 journey doesn’t not finish in Moscow, though. In fact, like Bon Jovi, you’re only halfway there, for the E30 extends a further 3,300km into Siberia.

By the time you exhaust the E30’s possibilities, you’re deep in the Asian continent, about 1,500km from the Mongolian border.

And if you were to drive that vast journey, it’s entirely possible that the most dangerous part of the journey, from a driving perspective, would not be on the Russian steppes, but actually on a short piece of road, little more than 6km long, in south Kilkenny.

Agricultural vehicles are dangerous

There was yet another fatality on our roads in an accident involving a tractor on Saturday morning (21 June) in Clare.

While the investigation into that accident will take its own course, it does seem as if there have been more accidents involving tractors in recent years.

There are a number of reasons why this would be. The roads are busier, for a start. There are more people in Ireland, we have more cars on average and we travel further than we used to.

And tractors and agricultural machinery are substantially bigger than they used to be. As Peter Thomas Keaveney and Gary Abbott report in our machinery pages, the average newly registered tractor is now over 150 horsepower.

That is a three-fold increase from the 1970s and a doubling since 1990. And bigger tractors mean bigger trailers.

A typical grain or silage trailer has gone from being 14ft by 7ft in the 1980s, carrying six to seven tonnes of grain to now being 20ft long, 8ft wide and carrying 16t to 20t of grain or silage, depending on height.

Combines, sprayers, harrows, seed drills, fertiliser spreaders, slurry tankers, mowers and rakes have all doubled in size. And these vehicles are much more dangerous on the roads, for the machinery operator themselves and for other road users.

It’s the same with lorries. The giant milk lorries going to Belview are perhaps the largest and heaviest vehicles on the roads in Ireland and they travel every boreen in the southern half of the country, as there are dairy farms to be found in all corners.

Every boat coming into Rosslare Port has lorries delivering imported stuff of all shapes, sizes and necessity. The boats coming into New Ross and Waterford ports are mostly freight, witnessing the passage of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fertiliser every year.

Cattle trucks traverse the road en route to New Ross Mart, Dawn Grannagh, and APB Waterford, with sheep heading eastwards to ICM Camolin in Wexford.

It's hardly surprising that in a country where farming and agribusiness form such a large part of our indigenous industry and in a region where farmland is rich and farming is pretty intensive, that farming and related vehicles form such a part of the traffic on our roads. And many of the roads aren’t great, in fairness.

Reducing the risks

But there is much that we can do to reduce the risks. The senior Garda who spoke at the meeting - Superintendent Gavin Hegarty - reminded drivers that there is much they can do to reduce the odds of being involved in an accident.

Never drive under the influence of alcohol, drugs or while tired. Don’t drive too fast - speed limits are a maximum, not a target. Don’t use your phone while driving. And be aware of other road users as you travel. Simple stuff, but sound advice.

He spoke of how, for every Garda, having to make that knock on the door is the worst part of the job.

“It stays with you, but for the person who answers the door, it’s much worse. Their lives are changed forever,” he said. You could have heard a pin drop as he did.

There are three million licensed vehicles registered in the Republic of Ireland. That’s almost twice as many as the 1.68m registered in 2000.

When you stop to think about it, it’s an astonishing increase in the concentration of traffic on our road network. So, of course, it’s more dangerous, particularly on busy national roads that are glorified two-lane highways.

And we just don’t have the money to make them all safer at the same time. The meeting on Monday night heard that the N25 stretch from Glenmore to Slieverue has been approved for an upgrade to a dual carriageway, but the funding is not currently in place and it isn’t in Trasnport Infrastructure Ireland’s (TII) current expenditure budget.

The estimated cost is €100m. That’s €10m per kilometre. And even if the N25 campaign is successful and this dangerous stretch of road is quickly replaced, the same won’t be true for every dangerous stretch of national road.

Seeing crosses on a hill depicting the 12 who have died here is a sharp reminder

So what can be done in the meantime? Local authorities are often accused of passing the buck to TII, but it seems that nothing gets done without TII’s say so - it is the competent authority.

And like Irish Water and other national bodies, you’re unsure whether TII has the sense of urgency that its remit would suggest it should have.

There was no TII representative at the meeting on Monday night. I would suggest that was a misreading of the importance of the meeting by TII’s executives and board. In any event, it should be by their actions they are judged. And I’m going to judge them harshly here.

It seems to be an all-or-almost-nothing approach to road upgrade works. I have driven the N25 a few times to Waterford lately and was extra conscious of the dangers due to the campaign being mounted.

Seeing crosses on a hill depicting the 12 who have died here is a sharp reminder.

And the main danger is caused by traffic trying to cross the road. By my count, there are 14 side-road exit or entry points on the 10km part of the N25 between Glenmore and Luffany roundabouts.

Most of these (11) are on the 6km stretch west of Murphy Motors. And many of them are on a part of the road that isn’t level. Traffic approaching can’t see a vehicle waiting to cross the road, sitting in a middle lane if one is provided.

There are two options that mean traffic never has to cross the road. One is a roundabout on the road, the other is an underpass beneath it. Surely these are cheaper options than a new road.

I’m not saying the N25 in Glenmore should not be ungraded - the organising committee led by Bernie Mullally and PJ Griffin made the case clearly and unequivocally on Monday.

But I am saying that we simply don’t have the resources to upgrade every such stretch of national road. So we are going to have to be more inventive as to solutions.

I know of many deathtrap stretches of road and lethal junctions. One near me is the crossroads at Ballycarney. The R745 is a secondary road, but a busy one. It links north Wexford with Kilkenny city via Ballindaggin Kiltealy, Borris, Goresbridge and Gowran.

And at Ballycarney, it crosses the N30, linking Rosslare with Carlow, Portlaoise and the west of Ireland.

Every time I cross it, particularly in a tractor, I have a sense of my own mortality. It’s crying out for a roundabout, but it probably won’t happen until there have been more fatalities.

No matter where in the country you live, you can point to similar junctions and roads. The roads from Dublin to the rest of the country have improved in recent decades, but if you are travelling cross country and not on the motorway network, the roads have not been upgraded in line with traffic increases.

And as communities across Ireland see the urgency with which Kilkenny County Council is now engaging with TII regarding the called-for road safety measures and see that the Taoiseach personally guaranteed the necessary funding to proceed the new road build to the next stage, expect to see similar groups pop up. TII might be well advised to attend the next one.