A hole-y terror
by planetparker
I would hate anyone to think that I am looking for sympathy. I can no longer walk as well as I could in the past but I try my best to go for short walks as far as I am able. Given the surface of my local paths, made more lunar by the habit of some lazy residents leaving their cars parked on the pavement and thereby excavating large holes, this can be a challenge worthy of any assault course on the Krypton Factor. Yet I was truly angered today when I attempted to go for a walk aided by my assistant Pat McNamara.
A physiotherapist once explained how we all have hundreds of thousands of little receptors on the soles of our feet, and how people with Multiple Sclerosis, whose sense of balance has been damaged, subconciously build up a mental template of the surfaces they cross. When the surface suddenly changes they can be in real difficulty. So how do you think I felt when I encountered a large hole on the footpath a few doors away from my house, which had not been levelled off and whose surface looked like the aftermath of a lava flow? If I had been on my own I could easily have fallen and injured myself. This hole is not small and covers most of the footpath between the kerb and the gate-pillars of the first house in the row.
I know who did this – to an extent - as there were quite a large number of men working at the spot on Wednesday May 5th. They were supposedly instaling a fibre-optic cable so that the great and the good of Cavan town can enjoy super-fast broadband services – for free - while I and most other broadband users have to pay for slower services. These people didn’t come down from a cloud. Indeed it is more than likely that they were contractors working for Cavan County Council. I am sure that once I begin to investigate no one in that organisation will know who these people were. I repeat I could have fallen and injured myself. If I had there would have been a cut-and-dried case for compensation. It has long been established that public bodies owe a duty of care to the public to ensure that footpaths and footways are safe for the public, and that none of their employees should do anything which may impinge upon this. This extends to those contracted by them.
I hope that this hole is soon repaired, though I am not holding my breath. A similar one (into which I did fall) remained unrepaired for years – indeed it almost took an Act of Parliament to mend it.
Let’s just say there are times when I get heartily fed up. especially by the negligent acts of people who have full use of their limbs but who act like indifferent zombies. Cavan County Council makes much of its commitment to improving access, but I for one sense that on the whole this is no more than words.
This is the same body which transformed my roadway, Earlsvale Road, into a rat-run for cars and heavy vehicles. This is a partial reason why residents along the road do not park their cars in their drive-ways, because the act of turning in while other vehicles are whizzing past in both directions would demand the skills of Eevil Kneevil. The council’s past indifference to the public of Cavan is therefore manifest. While this may have been the result of an action taken in the past by a former regime, they should remember the biblical injunction of how the sins of the father will be visited on the sons.
