The festive dip is a popular way for hardy swimmers to draw attention to a good cause, but few could match Liam Keane, who earned nationwide media coverage when he jumped into what appeared to be Ireland’s biggest pothole.
A video of Mr Keane hopping into a 1.37m (4½ft) deep pool of water in the road outside Lismire village in north Co Cork has attracted more than 70,000 views on Youtube.
Contacted last night, the 21-year-old from Kanturk said he had been “on the phone since 8am” to radio stations and newspapers.
Last Sunday he grabbed a pair of swimming togs and a towel and went out to inspect the water-logged hole after his friend uploaded a picture of it on Facebook.
He discovered it wasn’t a pothole but a cavity created by a ruptured water service connection.
He jumped in “as a bit of craic”, he said, but later felt it was an issue worth drawing attention to.
He wondered how a local authority could let road damage get so bad that someone would “be able to swim in a pothole”.
According to Mr Keane, the popularity of the video, uploaded on Sunday night, impelled Cork County Council to repair the road.
“ had been there for a week and they never did anything about it,” he said, adding that they had filled it in within hours of the video going online.
But the council said the local Garda station notified them about the damage at about lunchtime on Sunday, before the video appeared on Youtube.
“Water breaks occur on a weekly basis throughout the county.
“In this case, a service connection carried out by a private contractor failed,” a spokesman said.
Following an inspection that afternoon the council turned off the water supply and arranged repair work for the following morning.
Nonetheless, Mr Keane still earned the appreciation of locals who credited him with getting the job done.
“People were saying that it was great to get it filled because it was dangerous,” he said.
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