Pedestrian Dungarvan’s Grattan Square Is Not a Good Move For Everyone

You really have to hand it to the planner’s in Waterford City and County Council. Every so often they come up with some great ideas, ideas that hugely benefit the county.

In recent years a great deal of money was spent on developing the old Waterford to Dungarvan Railway Line, creating what we now know as ‘The Greenway’.

I have heard people give out about the money spent on the line in the recent years and have heard the same people claim that the council could well have spent the money that they put into the line in a much better way.

Many of these same people love to complain about everything, especially anything new. I would love to know what they think of ‘The Greenway’ now, what they think of the jobs it has created, the numbers of visitors it is bringing to the Dungarvan area in particular, and to all the wonderful comments first time visitors to mostly West Waterford are making about the town of Dungarvan and the areas around it. I suspect that if asked they would hold the same opinion, speaking to others anyway because some of these people would not want to give to say that they were wrong.

But not everything the planners have done in recent years could be described as a good idea.

Take Dungarvan’s Grattan Square for example. Many millions have been spent on it over the last few years. Yes I admit Dungarvan’s Grattan Square looks much brighter than it did a few short years ago, but was it a case of money well spent.

As a disabled person I would say no, the money was not well spent and I know that I am not the only disabled person to think this.

As someone that would regard Dungarvan as town, I would often visit it. My main business when i visit the town can be done in the Dungarvan Shopping Centre, but at times it often brings me out of the Shopping Centre and into the square in particular and the streets off it.

To me the surface of Grattan Square is a disaster to walk on if you are disabled or if you are not very mobile on your feet. I have seen comments left on my Facebook page when I make reference to the square and how dangerous it is, telling me that you should try and cross it in a wheelchair. As someone that gets by with the use of a pair of crutches and who has experience of using a wheelchair occasionally I can fully imagine how difficult it must be to get around Dungarvan and in particular the area around Grattan Square in a wheelchair.

To sum up Dungarvan’s Grattan Square, thanks to the planners who planned the changes made in recent years, even if it is looking more colourful, the area is an accident waiting to happen. Remember where you saw it first when something does happen.

I have in the last few weeks highlighted other dangerous areas around the town. I have for example highlighted the paving bricks which form the surface in what is often called the Plaza Car Park.

I am sure anyone who has eyes in their head and who uses the car park regularly will know only too well that the bricks just inside the main entrance to the car park have sunk and are starting to part. There is large gaps between some of the bricks and if someone was to walk across the them and a crutch or walking stick was to get caught between them the person using them risks getting badly hurt.

A person with a crutch or walking stick has some chance of maybe avoiding getting caught, but the same cannot be said maybe of someone using a white cane.

In the same car park the bricks in the area around the underground car park used by those living in the flats above it are also in a very dangerous state of repair and again someone is going to get seriously hurt in this area if they are not repair sooner rather than later.

Work has taken place to repair the bricks on Davitt’s Quay that were coming loose and the council deserves praise for this, but on the lanes coming off the quay leading to Main Street where there is bricks, some of them are in a very poor state of repair. Galwey’s Lane is an example where the brinks around the side of Ming’s Court Chinese Restaurant especially dangerous.

I know was told that some of these dangers were reported to Council Chiefs by a former employee who will remain nameless and a blind eye was turned to what was said. Why, I don’t know, but hopefully some or all of what is said here might be put to those in charge and the council will act before it’s too late.

The Dungarvan Leader this week has a worrying front page headline if you are disabled, and you have to wonder how much the planners are thinking.

I am aware with some time that the council are planning on closing off the Quay area of Dungarvan to traffic. This I understand is something that some Councillors have welcomed, something I am not shocked with because some councillors and indeed TD’s and Senators within the Déise County are very good at welcoming different things.

The Leader tells us that a section of the quay from the corner of Carberry’s Lane (i.e the corner of the Anchor Bar) to Thompson’s Lane (i.e. the corner of the Mooring’s Bar) is to be closed to Vehicular traffic from 3pm on Friday Evenings to 8am on Monday Mornings in the month of August.

Kevin Kirrane the journalist who wrote the piece tells us that Fergus Galvin (the Director of Services for Roads with Waterford City and County Council) didn’t need the approval of the elected councillors because the move was seen as a ‘temporary road closure’.

I hear you saying what’ his problem with this, after all it’s only a short section of the road, a few hundred metres. Well if you are disabled and in Dungarvan it makes a difference.

You see while that section of the road as i said is only a few hundred metres it contains two disabled parking bays, something which things stand are like hens teeth in Dungarvan. There are simply not enough of them as things stand, mostly because of the illegal use of the spaces, and if the council were to close off a few hundred metres of the road to traffic it will mean that Dungarvan is down two more Disabled Parking Bays.

 The Council in Waterford deserve great praise for the way they are getting people to visit Dungarvan, but if this new move comes into play and a section of road is closed off, the message to many disabled people in Dungarvan is that while most people are welcome to Dungarvan and the areas around it to use ‘The Greenway’ if you are disabled, then maybe you can do a little better than choose Dungarvan, because we don’t allow you to park with ease in the Town Centre.

Controversial Councillors Makes More Controversial Claims

Have you seen the front page of this week’s Dungarvan Leader. The main headline for an article written by Journalist Kevin Kirrane makes shocking reading, well it does for me anyway, I don’t know about you.

In case you have not seen it, maybe you have not picked up your copy of this week’s paper yet, or got the chance to have a look at it, or maybe you live in an area where the Dungarvan Leader is not sold or is hard to get, the headline reads ‘O’Donnell Warns Of Spiralling Costs Of New Bus Stop’.

Let me say here it is not Kevin that shocked me, nor is it Colm Nagle the paper’s Editor or any of the staff within the paper. Kevin is a brilliant journalist who does great work with the paper.

Maybe I should not be shocked as the O’Donnell referred to in the article is Councillor Seamus O’Donnell, who let’s face it, since he was elected to Waterford City and County Council in the local elections in 2014 has proven to be a very controversial person.

I am sure for those of you who do not know Councillor O’Donnell if you live in the Waterford area and don’t know him you will have heard him speak on WLRfm’s Current Affairs Programme – Deise Today presented by Eamon Keane and before that on Deise AM presented by the late Billy McCarthy a number of times speaking on a number of matters and has views that well let’s say that are not shared by the majority of people in 2018.

In many of his interviews on local radio since he became a Councillor, Councillor Seamus O’Donnell has made it know that he is a Catholic, and for whatever reason he does not always like ‘them sort of people’ you know the people that the Catholic Church in the past spoke out about, and some within it continues to speak out against, even if in 2013 when the then recently elected Pope Francis on his way back from a trip to Brazil (I think) was asked his views on homosexual people, he responded by saying ‘Who am I to judge’, something I am sure that the assembled journalists would have been shocked to hear as I am sure some were hoping for headlines for their newspapers from the mouth of the newly elected pontiff.

Well in this week’s Dungarvan Leader there appears to be another group of people that Councillor O’Donnell doesn’t like. If you have not read the paper maybe you are wondering before I go on is it black people, is it Chinese people, is it Hispania people, is it women, is it men, is it children, is it young people, is it old people, is it non-catholic people.

Ok in case you have not read the piece and want to know, it appears the latest people that Councillor O’Donnell does not like is wait for it, Disabled people.

If you have not been to Dungarvan with a while, you might like to know that within the town, close to the Civic Offices a new Bus Stop is being constructed with some weeks now. But Councillor O’Donnell has a major problem with this.

In the article which is brilliantly written by Kevin Kirrane, Councillor O’Donnell questioned the need for the bus stop “to be shifted around” when cost was taken in consideration, and compared the work being done outside the civic offices as “something like the Square, where we will run over budget, we’ll be running a couple of million over budget”.

As a disabled person and someone that has used the busses that travel between Waterford and Cork, stopping in Dungarvan, I for one welcome the new bus stop in Dungarvan. For those that don’t know me, or maybe who have never seen me, I was born with Spina Bifida and get around using crutches. But I am one of the lucky ones. When I have reason to use a bus to get to Waterford, Dublin or Cork as I have in the past and will in the future from Dungarvan, I am one of the lucky disabled people who can climb on and off the bus by myself, but not all disabled people are able to do this.

If a person in a wheelchair wants to travel from Dungarvan on one of the busses which stops off every hour wants to use it, at present it is almost impossible for them to do so, unless they are able to climb out of their chair and onto the bus be it by themselves or with help and to have their chair put into the hold under the floor of the bus.

I ask Councillor O’Donnell and anyone that might agree with him, that the work that is taking place in Dungarvan is a waste of money and not necessary, is it right that Disabled people in 2018 are not allowed to use public transport operating in and out of Dungarvan. For what it is worth, I think every disabled person should have the same rights as able bodied people, and I am sure that almost everybody, but clearly not everybody would think so as well.

I hope that good Catholic’s who support the likes of Councillor O’Donnell and his often controversial views go down on their knees first think every morning and last thing every night and thank the God that they claim to believe in for giving them two fine legs and two fine hands which work. I hope they give thanks to the God that they believe in for being able to sit behind the wheel of a car which will take them wherever they want to go, because not everybody as the use of their legs, hands and able to drive wherever they want to go.

I don’t know what the new Bus Stops in Dungarvan is costing the state, and I don’t care to be honest if the overall cost was to exceed ten million euro above the expected cost, or if it comes in under the expected cost, every cent spent on the stop is going to be well worth it if it allows just one disabled or one elderly person who wants to use public transport in or out of Dungarvan to do so.