Ring road, elderly residents, galway ring road, city council,

By Richard Hartmann

A group of elderly city residents set to lose their homes if the Galway Ring Road goes ahead want the City Council to relocate them and keep their community together.

Some 14 houses in the old Ballinfoyle/Ballindooley village on the Headford Road have been earmarked for demolition as part of the project.

The houses are the subject to a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) to make way for the new road.

Mike Kenny, a well known sign writer in and around Galway City centre, is one of the residents affected.

“Seven years ago, in January, we got a ‘letter to treat’, as they call it, through the door saying we were on the proposed route, and that our house would be CPO’d in due course,” he said.

Mr Kenny said that what the Council have offered him is less than half the value of the home he has lived in for 40 years.

Mr Kenny said a whole village was now under threat as a result of the CPO process for the new city bypass.

“It’s not just us, there are 14 houses in a row, and we are all in the same situation. The whole village has been going through this, we are in our mid 60s, others are retired people in their 70s.

“The whole stress of it is just unbelievable. The oral hearing was done last year by Zoom so most of the old people in the neighbourhood hadn’t a clue what was going on,” he said.

Mr Kenny said that none of the residents have any interest in moving but that if they must that they want to stay together as a community.

“The whole gang of us got together, 14 houses and said we’d like to stay together as a community. We identified where the City Council had a huge plot of land up on the Coolough Road, so we’d be able to stay in the same area. That was three years ago. They never came back to us,” he added.

Galway City Council had not responded to a request for comment at the time of going to print.

For more Galway Pulse stories click here.