THE town of Dromcollogher in County Limerick has been neglected over the last three years.
So said Fianna Fail councillor Michael Collins at this month’s Newcastle West Municipal District meeting. However, to be fair to the local authority, he did add that there hadn’t been any serious requests for works either.
However, with the 100th anniversary of the Dromcollogher Cinema Disaster taking place this September, Cllr Collins took the view that the West Limerick town would now need a “serious hand out”.
The Fianna Fail man called on the district office’s senior engineers to carry out an assessment of the town.
Fine Gael councillor Liam Galvin pointed out that public realm plans had been drawn up for the town square but were not acted upon.
“I’m talking about safety,” Cllr Collins replied.
“There’s a very big secondary school there, so I’m asking that priority be given to Dromcollogher. From a Council’s perspective, and a councillor’s perspective, we were fully behind spending money there but we weren’t going to railroad any plans through.”
Collins proposed that an appropriate assessment and plan be drawn up for traffic calming and pedestrian crossings in the town of Dromcollogher.
In response. Senior Executive Engineer for Newcastle West district, Ben Noonan said that a draft public realm and tourism plan was prepared for Dromcollogher in 2023 by the Community Department of Limerick City and County Council (LCCC).
“There was significant public consultation associated with the preparation of the draft plan which was also presented at a workshop to councillors in August 2023. Traffic calming, pedestrian crossings etc. formed part of the plan which was paused due to concerns over loss of car parking spaces,” Mr Noonan explained.
He went onto say that in light of this notice of motion from Cllr Collins that it was timely to revisit what was proposed in this very detailed draft plan and consider if the plan or elements of it are appropriate and could be delivered subject to available funding.
Cllr John Sheahan (FG) suggested that less is more when it comes to providing traffic calming works in County Limerick towns.
“I know that the intention is good but when you have villages like Dromcollogher, like Glin, some of these projects want their enhancement but they don’t want it to be totally transformed. I don’t think there’s a need to transform them to what some of the plans are,” Cllr Sheahan suggested.
“Dromcollogher is a town. They are very particular about that,” Cllr Collins fired back.
Mr Noonan told council members that the local authority were all for doing works there if the funding was available and would be looking at Dromcollogher in a “holistic” fashion.
“We should be realistic as well,” Cllr Sheahan opined.