CORK County Council has insisted that the surface dressing being used for county roads is of the same standard as being used by Cork City Council.

Director of roads Padraig Barrett was responding to a query from Cllr Ann Bambury (SD) at a recent meeting of the Bandon Kinsale Municipal District.

She said she had recently read a media report where Cork City Council said their road surface was of a higher melting point that its county counterparts.

 ‘I was a bit concerned over it and the fact that they were able to state that their road surface is of a higher standard than our county road surface,’ said Cllr Bambury. ‘They were able to state their road surfacing was of a higher melting point than the standard tarmac we use.’

She added that with €108m being raised in road tax in the county in 2024 councillors would like to ensure that they’ve got the highest standard asphalt similar to Cork city.

Mr Barrett acknowledged that the media report did say that Cork City Council use different materials but he said that’s because they don’t surface roads within the urban area of Cork City Council, which wasn’t included in the report.

‘They would use strong elastic asphalt, which we use as well in our urban areas and like on South Main Street in Bandon. We have about 1,500 kilometres of urban areas, but we have 10,500 kilometres of rural roads outside the built-up areas.’ 

He said most of the secondary and tertiary roads are usually surfaced with macadam or a wet mix which is then surface dressed.

‘However, with high temperatures where road surface temperature exceeds 55 or 60 degrees we can’t surface dress. We did get caught on a few occasions this summer where we got melting tar.’

He added it’s less than one per cent of the roads that had this problem. ‘It doesn’t happen every summer and there is no difference in quality with what we do compared to other local authorities. Cork County Council isn’t applying lower standards to its roads.’

Senior executive engineer Richard Cahill said the summer is their busy period when they carry out most of the resurfacing on roads in the municipal district.

‘Surface dressing machinery is scheduled each January for specific weeks throughout the season for the Bandon Kinsale Municipal District. Projects must be planned and delivered on time to ensure we can take advantage of those allocated dates,’ he said.

However, Mr Cahill added that the prolonged hot spell last month created significant challenges for their teams as they were required to carry out road paving. But despite these pressures we were able to carry out all surface dressing.’

He added that the construction of two new bus stops along the New Road in Bandon were completed on schedule, while works have started on constructing a bus shelter at the Innishannon bus stop.

Cllr Bambury welcomed the addition of the two new bus stops in Bandon and said she hoped people will avail of the free car park at Bandon GAA Club to use public transport.

Cllr Gillian Coughlan (FF) said It was a ‘red letter day’ for the village of Innishannon with the fact that they will have bus shelters to cater for both commuters and schoolchildren.

‘That didn’t look very likely that it would happen but within 12 months it has been delivered and I want to thank Richard, John and Sabrina for getting this over the line.’