By Sean Moriarty

Locals fear more lives will be lost unless works are urgently  done to make safety improvements to Finnegan’s Cross.in Kilcummin.

DEPUTATION: Cllr Marie Moloney brought local residents Tony Sugrue and his neighbour Tom O’Shea to a Killarney Municipal District meeting so they could air concerns about the lethal Finnegan's Cross junction.

The accident blackspot has been the scene of several serious accidents including a double fatality there in January 2020.

Elected councillors have been pushing for improvements works at the junction for years but it's been pushed back for various reasons including lack of funding, expired funding and land acquisition issues.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, Councillor Marie Moloney invited local residents to outline their concerns at Wednesday’s Killarney Municipal District Meeting.

“I could have filled the room with people spitting fire,” she said, explaining the frustration felt by people in the locality.

Retired Garda Tony Sugrue and his neighbour Tom O’Shea outlined their concerns and fears to elected councillors and members of Kerry County Council’s management executive.

Mr Sugrue, who said he was aware of two different fatal accidents in the area over the last four years, proposed that the junction coming from the Coolick side should be staggered and that the line of sight from the Lawlor’s Cross road should be extended.

During his Garda career he cited a similar issue that was prevalent in Donoughmore in County Cork and that a staggered junction eventually solved that problem.

All of the councillors gave their accounts of near misses and serious accidents in the area.

Cllr Donal Grady, who is a retired Fire Officer who worked in the Killarney district, witnessed the aftermath of several accidents there during his career.

“We are not doing enough, lives have been lost and there will be more lives lost,” he said.

Cllr Brendan Cronin said that recent road surface improvement works had actually “increased the speed of traffic" travelling towards the junction from the Lawlor’s Cross side.

“It is a very risky manoeuvre trying to cross the road there,” Cllr Cronin told the meeting, while Cllr John O’Donoghue called for a staggered junction in a similar proposition to the one made by Mr Sugrue.

Cllr Niall ‘Botty’ O’Callaghan offered to use his and his colleagues annual funding allocation to speed up works in the area.

“The locals feel nothing is being done,” Cllr Moloney added.

Killarney Municipal District Engineer, John Ahern said, in the short term, he will put "yellow bar road markings" on the approach roads but this job would require an extended spell of dry weather.

Other works in the area fell foul of very strict funding requirements. Money was allocated during previous road funding scheme allocations but the job requires land acquisition and the Council did not have the budget to both buy land and do the works under the one scheme.

He said he was very hopeful that additional funding will be made available this year under the same funding allocation. That round of funding is expected to be announced around February 15.

“It is our priority number one,” he said.

He praised locals who were engaging and receptive towards potential property acquisitions but warned that such moves take time.

Ahern was hopeful that progress would be made in the first months of this year.