The roads are bad in Mayo. The roads are bad in Ireland in general, but especially bad in Mayo. There are potholes, absent white lines and poor surfaces to name a few of their faults. Its a disgrace and its something we should all be ashamed of.There was a case recently in Achill of a road collapsing. The road collapsed because there was heavy rain and a drain that ran alongside the road was unable to take the water. The road flooded and the running water made the road structurally weak and highly dangerous. According to the press was it not for the alertness of locals a serious accident was averted.

Things like this should not happen in the first place. We are the sons and daughters of the Celtic tiger, affluence seemingly is our middle name. Motorists pay tax so that the local authority can maintain and improve the roads. We expect a service that is second to none and a local authority we can rely on to carry out audits on the state of the roads and take appropriate action to rectify matters. People wonder why there are so many accidents on the roads.

One local councillor was quoted in saying in relation to the incident on Achill:

“The maintenance budget does not appear to stretch as far as it used to and I do not know why that is the case. Any of the drainage you see is because of the money the councilors have made available to it. In some cases where it is particularly serious the Council do the maintenance work.”

The maintenance budget comes directly from car tax. I don’t see the numbers of the cars dwindling on the roads. They are steadily rising each year. So where is this money going!? I mean as affluent as we are..I don’t think that there is anyone so foolhardy as to give away money and not know where it goes. Yet we pay money to improve our roads nothing happens and more accidents happen. I understand a huge number are due to driver error but I often wonder how many of these are due to badly maintained roads.

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