Clonown Road 'not a priority' for major works, council says

Flooding on the Clonown to Athlone road in south Roscommon is now so severe that residents in the area are cut off from Athlone for “three to four months a year”, according to a local councillor for the area.

Cllr John Naughten told the Athlone Municipal District meeting of Roscommon County Council on Tuesday that the people of Clonown are “forced to take a 10/12 mile detour” during the winter months to get to Athlone.

During a wide-ranging discussion on the need for funding to be provided to carry out urgent repairs to the road, Cllr John Keogh said residents in the Clonown area feel they are being treated as “second class citizens” when they see “big funding announcements” for places like Monksland and elsewhere.

“This issue has been on-going for the past 30 to 40 years,” said Cllr Keogh, “but has got particularly bad since 2009 and the community are very concerned for their safety.”

Cllrs Keogh and Naughten told the Municipal District meeting that they had attended a recent public meeting in Clonown about the L-2034 road and the need for improvements, and the level of anger among local residents was palpable.

“They are no longer prepared to accept the situation where their road is completely submerged in water during the winter months and is not safe to travel on,” said Cllr Naughten, who added that the residents are looking for funding from the Departments of Public Expenditure and Transport to widen and raise the road. “There is an engineering solution but we need to money to do it,” he said.

Cllrs Keogh and Naughten tabled a motion before the Municipal District calling on Roscommon County Council to make a submission to the two Government Departments seeking funding to widen and raise the Athlone to Clonown road to ensure that road users “have safe access to and from Athlone town on a year round basis.”

Both councillors accepted that it was not within the remit of Roscommon County Council to provide funding for these works, but Cllr Keogh said the request of the local residents in Clonown to seek funding from central government was “not unreasonable.”

Municipal District Chair, Cllr Laurence Fallon, said this was an issue that is “likely to get worse” unless funding is provided, while the motion was also strongly supported by Cllrs Emer Kelly, Donal Kilduff and Tony Ward.

However, the written response from the council executive gave little hope that the flooding issue in Clonown will be resolved in the near future, as the council stated that the road is “not currently a priority road for significant improvements and there are no plans to develop a large scheme to raise the road or investigate safety concerns.”

The response did add that the council would meet with elected members to “document their concerns regarding safety” with a view to developing “a series of smaller schemes” that will tackle climate adaptation and road safety at local level.

Elected members were also reminded in the council’s written response that all works along the route in question are subject to screening for environmental impacts due to the “proximity of designated sites on either side of the route.”

The council acceded to a request from Cllr John Naughten to complete an assessment of costs for the works that would need to be carried out to alleviate flooding on the Athlone to Clonown road. The costings are to be presented to the June meeting of the Municipal District.