Something Has To Be Done With Dungarvan’s Grattan Square and Other Areas in the Town

It was brought to my attention this evening that in the last few days the wife of a well known Dungarvan man had a fall and sustained facial injuries as a result of a fall in the town. I was not made aware of what part of the town the fall happened.

I know there is some people fed up with me saying it, but to me as a disabled person who gets around with the use of a pair of crutches, I am saying that the area around Grattan Square is a disgrace. To be honest I don’t have a problem with the surface in the rest of the town that I have reason to use (maybe the covered mall area linking the shopping centre and O’Connell Street could do with a few mats that you see in swimming pools laid on the floor of it as the floor can be very dangerous in wet weather).

I don’t care how many people I annoy going on about the state of Grattan Square is since it was redeveloped a year or two back, to be honest I am doing to keep highlighting how dangerous it is and how someone is going to get seriously hurt in the square sooner rather than later. I reported here that I fell myself there on March 13 around lunch time. If those responsible for health and safety want to check this out I am sure any CCTV Cameras in and around the Square showed me fall between The All Rounder and the Bank of Ireland. I am sure the cameras outside the bank would have picked up the fall. I am well used to falling at this stage, especially in wet or dangerous conditions I can if i feel myself fall can almost land in a way that I will not get seriously hurt. And If I was seriously hurt in a public place I am not someone to go after compensation, but I know many people will, and when this happens in Dungarvan I hope that the Council are well insured, because sooner rather than later a claim is going to go in against the council.

I will be the first to admit that since Grattan Square was redeveloped, apart from the same colour surface for vehicles to drive on and the footpaths, the area does look well, but I don’t care how well an area looks, I would rather see an area be safe. The Council spend God knows how much on developing Grattan Square and we all know that in doing so they went well over budget with it.

I know that there is some high profile people in the Dungarvan area who were all for the development of Dungarvan and think what we have right now is the best thing since the sliced pan, but I hope that those that are off this opinion and especially those that designed and signed off on the redevelopment work in Grattan Square can sleep safely in their beds at night.

Right now these men and women may well be fit able bodied people and all their close relatives and friends may well be like them, but they might not always be this way. We all get old. We all get weak on our legs. Any one of us can be involved in an accident or have something like a stroke which may well render us disabled for the rest of our life. Sadly it is then and only them that people will find out at firsthand how dangerous Grattan Square and the areas around it in Dungarvan are.

Some people have told me to my face that I am always cribbing about something, maybe they are right, but in this case I am trying to point out something that is extremely dangerous, and I am going to continue to do so, and if people think I am cribbing, well then they are entitled to their opinion. But on the other hand fellow disabled people, mothers pushing prams or buggies, women wearing heels have also come to me and told me that they find it very difficult to negotiate the area around Grattan Square.

Next month we are voting in 32 Councillors to help run the county for the next five years. Six of these will come from the Dungarvan electorate area and I am here calling on them to give a commitment to make Dungarvan a much safer place for the disabled, the elderly and for people in general.  And It is not just the six Dungarvan Councillors I am calling on to do this. People from all over the county travel to Dungarvan on a regular basis to carry out business, to socialise and to carry out occasional, daily or weekly shopping and each of these people over the age of 18 regardless of whether they are from Ballinamult, Ballysaggart, Tallow, Clashmore, Portlaw, Lemybrien, Stradbally, Dunmore East, pick any area of the county you want, and I believe that the 32 elected councillors have a duty to make sure that each and every one of these people as well as future people with votes are safe in what they are doing, and I believe hand on heart that right now if you are in Dungarvan and as I say in particular the Grattan Square area as well as the Quay many people are NOT safe because of the surfaces that they are having to negotiate on a regular basis.