The ongoing destruction of Cork’s pavements

I noticed the damage to Paul St. over the weekend. I’d be inclined to give the developers the benefit of the doubt, that when the enormous amount of development which is going on in that area is complete, the damage to Paul St. and Patrick Street will be fixed.
The damage to French Church St. near Subway however is a totally different matter. Apparently, it is up to the the Council to carry out the repairs at the expense of the developer. I’m unsure what the hold up is there.

When I see how good a street can look with a quality, unbroken surface, I am amazed.

Not amazed how good it can look, amazed that there is a single street left that hasn’t been dug up within months and covered over with a lump of tarmac.

I passed through Paul St today and I’m not convinced that the damage is associated with the building works on the former Matthew’s premises. It begins by the Pinnochio toy shop and ends at Paul St shopping centre (I don’t want to imply that either business is responsible), so it doesn’t really connect to the Matthew’s site.

On the plus side, there did seem to be some work happening on the damage to the pavement outside the Dunne’s Stores Patrick St development.

One thing I have noticed of late is that a lot of streets on the northside have been resurfaced which is to be welcomed.

I think the pressure needs to be put on local councillors to ensure that the street surfaces are restored correctly. These developers are going to make a lot of money out of their malls etc.

I’m sure Dunnes Stores or O’Callaghan wouldn’t be too pleased if the City Council went into one of their lovely new shopping malls and dug up the floor tiles and replaced them with some nice grey cement, poured in as sloppily as possible.

I don’t see why a developer should be able to just rip up very expensive paving and just pour concrete. It’s utterly unacceptable vandalism and a gross waste of tax payers’ money!

@jungle wrote:

On the plus side, there did seem to be some work happening on the damage to the pavement outside the Dunne’s Stores Patrick St development.

Yes, I noticed this too, and on further inspection I can confirm that some of the concrete that had been poured to fill in the removed paving has now been replaced with a stretch of lumpy tarmac. In keeping with tradition, no doubt.

@Leesider wrote:

One thing I have noticed of late is that a lot of streets on the northside have been resurfaced which is to be welcomed.

If you are referring to the resurfacing of Watercourse Road and Shandon Street on the Northside, I’d suggest that a more haphazard and half-finished job has never before been inflicted on the streets of Cork. Or maybe thats just wishful thinking!

No, I agree with you about those street, especially Shandon St!!

I am on about the resurfacing of Sunday’s Well, John St and around Coburg St.

@bosco wrote:

Yes, I noticed this too, and on further inspection I can confirm that some of the concrete that had been poured to fill in the removed paving has now been replaced with a stretch of lumpy tarmac. In keeping with tradition, no doubt.

They had a section of that re-paved with the correct surface today. So, it must be a temporary issue.

There has been pretty serious destruction of the redbrick paving on French Church Street / Carey’s Lane though with utility connections to a few new shops.

Disgraceful behaviour!

@Leesider wrote:

No, I agree with you about those street, especially Shandon St!!

I am on about the resurfacing of Sunday’s Well, John St and around Coburg St.

Patrick’s Quay was also resurfaced, didn’t even think it was that bad beforehand, but happy to see it looking so well. Until they dig it up again, that is.

Good to see – they’ve restored the pavement on Patrick St. by Dunnes Stores. Stands out a bit at the moment, but looks better than expected.

Also noticed there seems to be water gushing up from the drains a lot lately in the city centre, and in one spot on Patrick Street is actually leaking up through the pavement. Hopefully that doesn’t mean it needs to be dug up again..

Well done jungle for starting the topic. It’s good to know that there still are people who actually care about such ‘unimportant’ matters as paving.
Question: if I wanted to do a bit more than writing on a forum, say – to send an email or a letter, which authority should I address, does anyone know? Would it be Cork City Council? In Poland (where I come from) any public office is obliged to answer every querry that it receives – don’t know if that’s the case in Ireland – but in this way maybe we could get to know if there is any official policy regarding paving.

@venividi wrote:

In Poland (where I come from) any public office is obliged to answer every querry that it receives – don’t know if that’s the case in Ireland.

In Ireland, it seems, every public office is obliged not to answer you, to deny any knowledge of you contacting them and do nothing about your original query!

There was an article on this very topic (Cork Paving) in the Architecture section of last Saturday’s Weekend Examiner.

@who_me wrote:

Also noticed there seems to be water gushing up from the drains a lot lately in the city centre, and in one spot on Patrick Street is actually leaking up through the pavement. Hopefully that doesn’t mean it needs to be dug up again..

I’ve noticed over the past two weeks that there are crews working at night on the drains along Oliver Plunkett st, Grand Parade and possibly Patrick St. They seem to be taking a section at a time, removing the grates and cleaning out the drains.
Whether it’s a preventative or reactive measure, I don’t know, but hopefully the former. This time of year has a tendency to be bad for storms and flooding so it would be nice to see the powers that be having the foresight to take action before the city is under water.

@bosco wrote:

I’ve noticed over the past two weeks that there are crews working at night on the drains along Oliver Plunkett st, Grand Parade and possibly Patrick St. They seem to be taking a section at a time, removing the grates and cleaning out the drains.
Whether it’s a preventative or reactive measure, I don’t know, but hopefully the former. This time of year has a tendency to be bad for storms and flooding so it would be nice to see the powers that be having the foresight to take action before the city is under water.

Given there was water leaking out through the pavement (i.e. not coming from a drain/manhole) I’m going to guess it’s “reactive”! 😉 They had to dig up a small section of the street at the Western end of Patrick St. to fix it.

They’re back digging up the pavement on Paul St. too, about 10ft away from where it was last dug up, at the French Church St. junction – there’ll be more tarmac than paving there soon.

This one isn’t a pavement, but College Road, on which we spent a fortune and a huge amount of time in the last few years has had a traditional builder’s repair carried out at the junction with O’Donovan’s Rd.

Why is this problem so much worse in Cork than elsewhere?

@jungle wrote:

This one isn’t a pavement, but College Road, on which we spent a fortune and a huge amount of time in the last few years has had a traditional builder’s repair carried out at the junction with O’Donovan’s Rd.

Why is this problem so much worse in Cork than elsewhere?

There are times when I think it would be easier to just withdraw a few hundred quid a month from the bank, throw it on the steps of City Hall and light it with a match rather than pay tax / rates. It’s being used almost as wisely!

Or, perhaps we should just install a big money shredding facility in the infamous Room 101 ?