In Cabra, a brand-new footpath was dug up just weeks after being built

It was only in August that new footpaths were put in along Annamoe Drive in Cabra, says Catherine Doogan, who lives there.

Then, just weeks later, in September, ESB had a trench dug through them, Doogan says.

Her neighbour, Frances McGee, says “They must not have coordinated with each other.”

Records show it was the same contractor, Richard Nolan Civil Engineering, who the council hired to put down the footpath in August – and who ESB hired to dig it up in September.

Neither Dublin City Council nor ESB has responded to queries sent last Wednesday asking why they didn’t coordinate better, and how much extra cost this added.

But in an email to local Green Party Councillor Feljin Jose about the issue, a council official said the council told ESB about the new footpaths in February.

Meanwhile, to get permission to do its planned works, ESB would have had to apply to the council for a “road opening licence”, at least 21 days in advance. The work included “Trenching, ducting & reinstatement”, a council document says.

So both sides would have known each others’ plans, it seems.

“This is just one example – it’s part of a wider issue in Dublin city of roads and footpaths being dug up for works and that maybe not being coordinated that well, so then they’re dug up again soon after,” said Jose, the Green Party councillor.

A tarmac trench

On Thursday, the footpaths had been redone all the way from where one end of crescent-shaped Annamoe Drive leaves Annamoe Terrace, near a council office – to where the other end of Annamoe Drive rejoins Annamoe Terrace.

Of this 500 metres or so of new footpath along Annamoe Drive, maybe 90 metres had been dug up and then temporarily patched. The smooth grey concrete marred by a strip of black tarmac maybe the width of a sheet of A4 paper.

Neighbours Doogan and McGee stood at one end of this long trench, under a tree, as rain started to fall.

“We thought they were finished, and then they came and dug it up again,” McGee says.

The tarmac trench shouldn’t remain along the footpath forever.

As part of the normal process of getting a road-opening licence from the council, ESB is required to fully restore the footpath – presumably to a smooth concrete surface.

And it would have had to put down a deposit with the council, so if it doesn’t sort that, the council can theoretically take that money and pay to get the work done.

It’ll likely be months, or more, before that footpath is fully restored, though. McGee worries it’ll never again be as nice as it was for those few weeks in September before ESB had it dug up, says McGee.

“It’s going to be a patch-up job when they fix it,” she says.

But the email from the council official to Jose says “The full width of the footways will be fully reinstated in concrete for the full section that was excavated by the ESB.”

“While it is important that Dublin City Council investment in our roads and footpaths is protected it is also important that services are upgraded to the residents to ensure continuous power of service,” it says.

Can the council do better?

Councillors have long complained about the state of the city’s roads and footpaths.

All over the city, companies dig up footpaths and streets to fix or upgrade underground utilities. Then come the black tarmac patches, which can remain for many months.

“It’s quite embarrassing, like so much so that a local residents’ organization had, like, a competition to spot the worst blob,” Fine Gael Councillor Danny Byrne said at an April 2023 council meeting.

Eventually, in most cases, the surface is restored to a still-patchy but smoother surface (before, often, it’s dug up again).

There are about 30,000 holes dug in the roads and footpaths of the city each year, senior executive engineer Deri Flood said in March 2023.

About 40 percent of these are dug by Irish Water, 20 percent by ESB, 12 percent by Gas Networks Ireland, “and the remainder are divvied up between internal utilities within ourselves and the telcos”, she said.

Broken water mains and electricity outages can’t always be foreseen, but is there a way to improve coordination between Dublin City Council and utilities to avoid repeatedly digging up roads and footpaths for planned works?

Neither Dublin City Council nor ESB responded.

Jose said he’d like to see a better system of coordination to avoid re-doing recently redone roads and footpaths.

“It’s a waste of time, a waste of construction resources, and a waste of concrete,” he said. “And for resident’s it’s even more disruption.”