A HIGH Court judge yesterday ordered Cavan County Council to repair a six-mile stretch of potholed road arising out of an action taken by local people.
In a judgment which is expected to have wide repercussions for other groups seeking to have their roads put in order, Miss Justice Carroll also referred to the duties of the Oireachtas in relation to road repairs.
"The Oireachtas, having imposed and continued a statutory obligation on a local authority to maintain roads, must, as long as that obligation remains unqualified, make it possible for local authorities to perform their statutory duties," she said.
"Pre-1978, the local authority would have had to increase its rate to discharge its obligations, but since the elimination of a broad-based rating system, it is no longer possible for a county council to do this.
"The central fund, therefore, must make up the shortfall. This is not a case of telling the Government how it must spend money. It is a case of the Oircachtas having imposed a statutory duty on local authorities, being required to provide the means of carrying out that duty."
Thirty-four people living close to the road between Ashgrove and Staghall, Belturbet, sued Cavan County Council. Miss Justice Carroll, who visited the county to see the state of some of its roads, said yesterday: "If the roads have deteriorated since I saw them, they must be nearly impassable." She added that a plea of impecuniosity was no defence.
The question of an appeal by the council against yesterday's decision is to be raised again in two weeks. The judge put a stay on her order for that period. She allowed costs to the residents but also put a stay on that order pending an appeal.
Mr Michael McDowell SC, for the residents, had submitted at an earlier hearing that his clients were not jumping the queue to have the repairs done. They did not know where they were in the queue and did not know if it would ever move. It could take up to 22 years to deal with the county's backlog of repairs.
For the county council, it had been stated that Co Cavan was broadly underlaid by a weak drumlin soil which, when saturated, had very low strength. It was under approximately 37 per cent of the land area. Development of farm mechanisation had contributed to the break-up of roads, as had the increased permissible axle loading from eight to 10.5 tonnes.
Since the removal of rates from private dwellings in 1977 and from agricultural land in 1983, the county councils depended on government to make up lost revenue. This had not kept pace with inflation. The Department had sought to match limited resources to unlimited or unachievable demands, it was stated.
The council submitted that of 1,350 county roads in Cavan, about 600 could be described as being in a broadly comparable position to the Ashgrove-Blackhall road. It would cost approximately £40 million to bring those roads into a satisfactory condition.
The council had made an order that if the residents came up with £21,000 - 15 per cent of the cost - it would apply the balance of the 85 per cent. Miss Justice Carroll said it could not be the case that statutory duty depended on a voluntary payment for it to be complied with.
She said it was not impossible for the council to carry out its statutory duties to the applicants. The council objected that they would get precedence over other similarly disadvantaged residents in the county.
"That may well be so," she said, "but the fact is that they have applied to the court for relief and they are entitled to it. The floodgates are a problem for another day, unless the Oireachtas removes the statutory duty."