Widower had to erect his own street lights at spot wife was killed

A man whose wife was killed as she crossed an unlit road erected his own street lighting – because Galway County Council wouldn’t.

Eoin Durkin, supermarket owner and post master in Tully, Inverin, was speaking following the death of the third pedestrian in just 18 months on a one kilometre stretch of road from his business premises to the local church.

Máirtin Breathnach (65) died after he was hit by a car as he crossed the main Conamara coast road outside Tully Church on Sunday evening.

Mr Breathnach had been coming from a funeral shortly after 6pm and was returning to his sheltered accommodation at Tearmann Éanna when he was struck by a car. In October of last year a man of similar age and a resident of the same centre died after he was struck by a car at the same location. The latest brings the number to five pedestrians killed in the last four years on the same stretch of road.

In January last year, Anna Durkin was knocked down outside the shop and post office business she ran with her husband, Eoin.

It was a dark, wet winter’s evening. Apart from the lights from her own Costcutters shop, there were no public street lights in the area.

Following almost a year of waiting for Galway County Council to erect street lighting on that stretch of road, where TG4’s television studios are based, as well as a school, a church, a bar, a small industrial estate and a HSE care facility, Mr Durkin decided to take matters into his own hands.

“My requests were falling on deaf ears, so I bought and erected three street lights across the road from the shop because I didn’t want to lose anyone else.

“The death of Máirtín Breathnach, just over the road in a poorly lit area brought it all back to me and I can’t understand why a recommendation of the Galway West Coroner at Anna’s Inquest, hasn’t been carried out by the local council,” he said.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.