{"id":658772,"date":"2026-10-18T21:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T21:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/658772\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T21:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T21:56:11","slug":"extraordinary-failure-to-test-air-quality-in-heavily-congested-cork-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/658772\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Extraordinary\u2019 failure to test air quality in heavily congested Cork town"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">A senior HSE Public Health manager is \u201chorrified\u201d that no air-pollution monitoring has been carried out in\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.echolive.ie\/corknews\/arid-41918758.html\">Charleville<\/a>, one of the most gridlocked towns in Munster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Fine Gael councillor Aileen Browne, a business manager for the HSE Public Health who lives in the town, expressed \u201chorrified\u201d surprise that\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.echolive.ie\/corknews\/arid-41922769.html\">Cork County Council<\/a> has never monitored air quality in Charleville.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">More than 18,000 vehicles pass through Main St every day, many of them heavy-goods. And engines emit more pollution when they are \u2018idling\u2019 in traffic jams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Browne was responding after a written reply was given to councillors by Ger Barry, the local authority\u2019s director of services, planning, and environment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Mr Barry said: \u201cAt present, no previous air-quality assessments relating to Main St, Charleville, have been identified.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Further enquiries and searches are ongoing to determine whether Cork County Council holds any historical records, assessment reports, or other relevant information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu caption\">Recent assessment carried out<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Mr Barry added that a recent assessment of traffic and air quality had been carried out in Charleville by a team designing the proposed upgrade of the N20 Cork-Limerick road to motorway status. The findings of this assessment will be made available in due course.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Browne said she found it \u201cextraordinary\u201d that there has been no air-pollution monitoring in one of the most congested towns in Munster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Councillors representing the Carrigaline area last year expressed shock that a council pollution monitor in the town had been out of action for 18 months. New equipment has since been installed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Browne said: \u201cEverybody knows that you will be stuck in traffic for ages and all the emissions coming from gridlocked vehicles are there for the people of Charleville to inhale.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Meanwhile, studies carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency showed that nitrogen dioxide levels in Macroom town centre were reduced by 53.8% after the bypass was opened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Browne said the respiratory health of locals in congested towns remains at risk. \u201cWe need to take concerns of our residents seriously and this council has a responsibility to take these concerns seriously as well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Fianna F\u00e1il councillor Ian Doyle urged officials to seek out any pollution reports the council may have undertaken. He said there is an \u201curgency\u201d to make the report by the motorway planning team publicly available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior HSE Public Health manager is \u201chorrified\u201d that no air-pollution monitoring has been carried out in\u00a0Charleville, one&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,63,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-658772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-news","tag-cork-county-council","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}