DANGER ON ROADS, ISOLATION IN HOMES OF SOUTH EAST SLIGO
IF you run out of milk or a stamp in a certain corner of South East Sligo, you have to drive to the next county to get some.
The 22 kilometres between Ballygawley and Ballyfarnon in Roscommon has not one filling station. Ivy- covered shops, closed post offices, pubs and churches lie derelict along a stretch of narrow road which runs almost parallel to the N4 north of Lough Arrow.
In between the lake and Carrane Hill Mountain lies the village of Geevagh and nearby townlands of Sooey and Glen. The effects of the recession have torn the social fabric of the area. The village has a church, two pubs, a semi- occupied housing estate and school but no Post Office, convenience store, filling station, creche or other local shops.
“There should be a local shop here in Geevagh, it should be buzzing with people coming and going. We go to Ballyfarnon for our diesel or milk but it’s just not the same going to another county. Everyone’s on the road but you’re talking to no one. That’s what’s making the roads busier,” says Geevagh farmer John Deignan, one of the people behind a recent successful campaign to get traffic calming measures installed in the village.
He’s seen for himself the effects of speeding on narrow roads originally built for donkey carts in the last century.
“There isn’t one car that slows down to 60kph through the village unless they’ve broken down. There hasn’t been one speed van parked along here in the last ten years,” he says.
The single biggest issue in the entire area is road safety, he believes. People living in large cities have safer places to walk than in South East Sligo: “You won’t see one person walking along the road here. Why? Because you’d be killed on it. It’s a no- no,” says John.
“A lot of my neighbours with teenage children going to football always have to drive them, the road is busy. They’ve told me they cannot let them out on a bicycle, even going to the pitch, with the speed of cars,” he says.
The R284 Ballyfarnon to Sligo is “mayhem” at rush hour twice a day with people commuting north to Sligo or south to Carrick- on- Shannon. Now with the traffic calming measures secured for Geevagh village this year, John and his fellow campaigner and farmer Pat Davey are turning their attention to the lack of safety barriers along the road. The river Feorish and many drains run almost parallel to the road. Several times a year flash floods from mountain streams can fill the roadside ditches with up to 10 ft of water, creating potential death traps for motorists.
The slightest wobble of a tyre aqua- planing sees cars skid over the edge.
John came across a nurse coming home from work one night: “She hit a flash flood on the road and went into the ditch and spun over on her roof. Lucky enough she passed the drain and went into the field,” he recalls.
“Several cars have come into this ditch. If they went over on their roof they were trapped and that’d be it, gone. It’s really bad around this bend. If you had a barrier you’d have something in place but there’s nothing at all,” he says.
Smashed car lights lying scattered on the steep embankment are testament to his words.
Geevagh has had no local councillors since Fine Gael’s Leo Conlon from Coolmurla, Geevagh and Fianna Fail’s Michael ‘ Boxer’ Conlon from Rinnatruffane, Geevagh, who both served over 25 years each, retired in 2004.
“We had two councillors and now we don’t have any. We work with Cllr Thomas Healy though they have a lot on their plate. It’s a big area from Dromore West up as far as Roscommon,” says Pat Davey.
“Glen school is lying derelict, there was meant to be something done with it years ago. The Post Office is closed, the shop is gone, the pub is gone, the chapel is gone,” says Pat.
“There’s two shops gone in Conways’ Cross as well,” adds John.
“We seem to be forgotten about. If it was somewhere else you’d have your local representative screaming and roaring to get things done. I think they’re too laid back here. They don’t really seem to care. The divide seems to be getting larger and larger,” he says.
Other issues in their sights include the traffic bottlenecks at Coola Post Primary School and Geevagh Primary School. John thinks that by 2040 the area will be taken over by forestry unless locals get campaigning themselves.
“It’s alright being dictated to from an office but they haven’t got a clue what’s going on in the real world,” he says.