Coolagown said an emphatic “no” this week to a plan by Lagan Construction to bring trucks carrying soil from Cork Marts in Corrin to the flood relief works via their village. The soil is needed to construct embankments as part of the relief works. The contractor first sought permission to bring the lorries through Fermoy in the evening time, but say they did not get approval to do so and so had to find an alternative route.

“We are very very angry and very unhappy,” a spokesman for Coolagown Tidy Towns told The Avondhu on Wednesday. The village has won the Tidy Towns competition for a number of years in succession and also won the Entente Florale international competiton in 2011. The village prides itself on its appearance and strong community effort in keeping it pristine.

“This is our prime time, we are working day and night to get things ready for the Tidy Towns competition. This would undo everything,” the spokesman said.

MEETING OVERDUE

They sought and had a meeting on Tuesday evening with local county councillors, making their case in the strongest possible terms. A meeting is due to take place in the coming days between members of the Coolagown community and the contractor. “It’s a meeting that should have happened months ago,” their spokesman said. He says they were never consulted about the proposal. The people of the village are unanimous in their opposition to the move, he added.

Asked what action they might take to prevent the trucks from going through their village, he said “we’ll have to wait and see. Anything is possible.” “This is a Fermoy problem, not a Coolagown problem and it should have a Fermoy solution,” he concluded.

Councillor Kevin O’Keeffe has tabled a motion for next week’s area committee meeting, calling on Cork County Council to seek a reversal of the decision from the contractor. Councillors Noel McCarthy and Tadhg O’Donovan are also supporting the Coolagown residents. “I stand behind the people of Coolagown, I feel it’d be very unfair for a large number of heavy trucks to go through a village where the community has put in so much work to keep looking well. Those roads don’t lend themselves to having heavy trucks passing over them. It would ruin the approach roads,” Cllr. Frank O’Flynn said.

DECISION NEEDED

The matter was discussed on Wednesday afternoon at a meeting of the town’s traffic management committee attended by the contractor. No agreement was reached. It was decided however that the option of bringing the trucks through Fermoy from 7pm to 7am daily would be brought before the full meeting of Fermoy Town Council next Monday night for a decision. It’s understood however that the contactor will likely seek to use both the Coolagown route by day and the town centre route in the evenings to get the required loads of soil to the site as quickly as possible.

Another headache for the traffic management committee is that the proposal to bring the soil through Coolagown comes at the same time that the same contractor begins major works on the Courthouse Road next week meaning that the extra trucks involved would be added to the traffic, which will be reduced to a single lane.