Exactly ten years ago this week the Herald ran a six-page pothole special, highlighting surface problems around the county. 

The spread is shocking to us today in that the potholes it featured no longer seem that big, despite the harsh winter of that year. 

In fact, many appeared quite small compared to the craters that can be found across Fermanagh today, a decade later.  

Included with this article is just a small selection of images of some of the many potholes local motorists now have to deal with on a daily basis, and of the damage they can cause, following years of road neglect in the absence of a functioning government. 

Brookeborough councillor Sheamus Greene, who regularly highlights the size of local potholes by using his shoe for context, said the first thing he did after the new Executive was announced was email the new Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon. 

Urging the Department to continue with the Rural Roads Initiative, which was set up by the previous Infrastructure Minister Chris Hazzard before the Stormont institutions collapsed three years ago, Cllr Greene said previously rural roads “had been chronically under funded for a generation or generations.”

“The Rural Roads Initiative actually got to the root of the problem,” he said. “To me it was working, it just didn’t get long enough at it.”

Cllr Greene cautioned against a phrase he said had “worryingly” been used quite a bit since the new Assembly reconvened, however – “value for money.” 

“As soon as you see value for money mentioned, money is going to go to Belfast and Derry because obviously you get more value for money where there’s a high population,” he said. 

“Straight away a rural county like Fermanagh gets under funded because of that value for money. We need to be really, really cautious of that phrase.”