‘Multiple large potholes’ including one the size of a van making road very unsafe

Council road engineers “couldn’t have anticipated” the rate at which the surface of a diversion route for the Hazelhatch Road has deteriorated.

Cllr Trevor Gilligan brought a motion before the Clondalkin, Newcastle, Rathcoole, Saggart and Brittas Area committee meeting calling for repairs to Loughtown Road, also known as Brownstown Road, due to “multiple large potholes including one approximately the size of a van in both length and width and around 4–5 inches deep.”

“The potholes are so bad, and the rain was so bad in these potholes that it was like a swimming pool, and motorists had to then veer onto the other side of the road, making it very unsafe,” he told the meeting on Wednesday, March 18.

He highlighted that this road, currently in use as a diversion route while Uisce Éireann carry out works on the Hazelhatch Road from the junction with Loughtown Road and the junction with Athgoe Road, is the only access road for residents of Brownstown (located close to the Dublin/Kildare border).

An engineer with the council’s road maintenance department told councillors at the meeting that it was unfortunate that the higher volume of traffic along Loughtown Road has “coincided with the torrential rain that we had late January/early February”.

He stated that while they have carried out some repairs and surveyed for works to be carried out in the future, it “wouldn’t be feasible to carry out works at the moment” while the road is in use as a diversion route.

Coming back in after the staff member’s reply, Cllr Gilligan stated that the damage to the road should and could have been prevented.

“We should have seen all this beforehand and planned all this and repaired these potholes before proceeding with the Hazelhatch roadworks,” he said.

“Now we’re in a situation where we can’t actually fix the potholes because we’re doing new works,” he added.

Responding to these comments from Cllr Gilligan, the road engineer said that it was a combination of the increased traffic using Loughtown/Brownstown Road as a diversion and the record-breaking rainfall that had resulted in this road deteriorating at an unexpected rate.

“We could have anticipated the traffic, we couldn’t have anticipated the rainfall,” he said.

“There’s parts that we could have done better, but we can’t control the weather unfortunately.”

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