Pothole punctures the festive spirit

DOZENS of motorists had their car tyres burst on Christmas Eve by a pothole at Claureen on the Lahinch Road, Ennis.
The pothole, which affected motorists driving away from the town, provided a lot of end-of-year business to local tyre repair outlets. Pat Foudy on the Mill Road said lots of people had been coming to him after he re-opened on Wednesday.
“Yesterday, I’d say we did about 30 tyres, a lot of them would have been people I know. It happened to them on Christmas Eve. I had some breakdowns on St Stephen’s Day and a few more the day after.
“We were open fully yesterday and it was an awful day, all from the pothole. All the damage was done in a few hours on Christmas Eve, with people going to mass and things like that. Most people had one, if not two, tyres cut, the tyres were written off and a lot of the rims were damaged as well. I have a load of tyres here that had no miles up on them that were cut, just from one pot hole.”
He said that an average tyre costs about €75, while alloys had also been damaged.
It’s understood repair work has taken place on the pothole but that it has been hampered by the heavy rain this week.
Jean McCabe was one of the motorists affected, bursting two of her tyres. “I was on my way home from work and I would have left there at about 7.30. They were two run-flat tyres and they cost about €200 apiece.”
She was off the road for a couple of days over Christmas as a result, her car parked up at a nearby petrol station.
She said the efforts to repair the pothole haven’t been successful. “There was gravel put there but it seems to have washed straight back out again. It was still bad last night,” she told The Clare Champion on Thursday.
The offices of Clare County Council and Ennis Town Council were closed on Thursday and no comment could be obtained.