PART of the N71 from Ballydehob to the Gabriel Rangers GAA Club isn’t wide enough to create a footpath, according to a council engineer.

Cllr George Gill (FF) raised the issue at a meeting of the West Cork Municipal District claiming that more and more people are worried about the danger to pedestrians and young people in particular.

‘I know the road is narrow, and that there may be no short-term fix, but we have to find a way to deliver a footpath to the GAA club,’ he said.

‘It is important that people can safely walk to and from Gabriel Rangers because the GAA site is too wet to provide sufficient parking,’ he added.

Cllr Caroline Cronin (FG), who raised the issue at several local authority meetings, recently met senior council management on site.

‘They could see that cars can’t park there, and that children can no longer walk through the fields because the ownership of one piece of land has changed.’ she said.

Cllr Cronin pointed out that the council owns a substantial amount of that land and suggested that an off-road footpath would be the ideal solution because using the public road is too dangerous.

Cllr Finbarr Harrington (Ind) pointed out that huge sums are being invested in devising greenways when a situation, like this, calls for a simple, but necessary, footpath.

‘If we could can tap into some of that greenway money it would be very well spent making this road safer for children walking up to the pitch for training,’ he added.

Executive engineer, Kevin Lynch, said the N71 from Ballydehob to Gabriel Rangers GAA club currently does not have sufficient road width between the ditches to install a full-length footpath.’

He said: ‘The installation of a footpath would require agreements with relevant landowners to acquire the sufficient additional width needed, and any footpath installed on a national road would also need to be agreed with TII, and would need to be in line with their requirements and specifications.’

The engineer also gave an undertaking to look at the proposal to use the land owned by the council.