It is a road to be proud of.

It wasn't always thus.

The six-mile stretch of the Ashgrove/Staghill road not so long ago was pothole hell, a thirdworld track littered with craters, servicing an alleged first-world country. In time, the road became a cause celebre, symbol of the state's inability to go from A to B without falling into a hole.

The road went all the way to the highest court in the land, before driving on to Brussels. Last week, it ended when eight residents received cheques in compensation for their 13-year odyssey in search of a decent standard of road.

"You wouldn't have called it a road at all, " Agnes Ludlow remembers. She and her husband Kevin suffered through the worst the road had to offer. She has a photograph in which she is carrying the family's Jack Russell on the road to save him from injury, if not drowning. Kevin got a kneecap replaced in 1993 and was afraid to go outside his door because he would have been unable to negotiate the road on crutches. Their neighbour Desmond O'Reilly recalls that first gear was the only way to travel.

In 1994, there was a death in one of the 35 homes on the road, and it looked like a hearse would not make it to the house. On the appointed Sunday morning, the council dispatched a lorry of gravel to effect temporary repairs for the hearse's safe passage. The locals reckon there might have been up to 1,000 potholes on the road, some measuring 15 feet by four.

"We decided that something had to be done, " O'Reilly says. "For a long time it had an awful effect on the way we lived." At one stage O'Reilly and a neighbour began filling in the holes with gravel themselves, but the council warned them away, suggesting that they would be legally liable if accidents occurred.

The residents on the Ashgrove/Staghall stretch were not alone. All over Cavan, potholes were claiming purchase on large tracts of tarmac.

The county became synonymous with the blasted things. Some blamed the soft soil that gave rise to drumlins. Others claimed it was maladministration.

Donal Lunny wrote a hornpipe called 'Cavan Potholes'. Sharon Shannon played it with gusto, as if her squeeze box alone could succeed where council lorries had failed. The musician Robbie Robertson once said that the road was a goddamn impossible way of life . . . and he hadn't even been to Cavan.

Locally, some citizens began fomenting resistance. One campaigner, Martin Hannigan, took to protesting outside council meetings, and highlighting potholes with luminous paint.

The upshot was the formation of the Cavan Road Action Group (CRAG). The group formed on foot of public meetings and subsequently put four candidates forward in the 1991 local elections. All were elected, but met with resistance in chamber from the established parties.

Progress was slow. The potholes weren't going away, you know.

"We got together because of desperation.

Something had to be done and the council didn't look like they were doing it, " according to Crag's secretary, Declan Fitzpatrick.

In January 1994, the county manager Brian Johnston proposed a £250 levy on all houses in the county to pay for the roads. There was pandemonium at the next council meeting.

Councillor Andy O'Brien said people were coming back to Cavan from the east coast sick at the sight of autobahns being constructed while in Cavan they hadn't access to their homes, places of worship, work or schools.

He said local people thought the benefits that belonged to the people of the Pale in times of subjugation were still there. Another councillor pointed out they also had autobahns in Mayo. (P Flynn is credited with banishing potholes from Mayo. ) Meanwhile, there was a suggestion that the meeting be abandoned over the noise because the paint-wielding Hannigan was protesting outside the chamber, making a ferocious racket. But the chairman insisted he would not be intimidated and the meeting continued. In such a cauldron, the potholes got deeper and holier.

Within months of that nadir, CRAG had taken the initiative. After hunting around for a suitable test case, the group joined forces with the people of Ashgrove/Staghall. It was time to assert some rights.

Unfortunately, the solicitors they approached were unwilling to take their case. CRAG had to go as far as Ballinamore in Co Leitrim to retain advice.

"Around 1993 we began researching into the legal possibilities, " Fitzpatrick remembers.

"Then we had to identify a road that would suit an action. We approached the people on the Ashgrove/Staghall road because we knew exactly how bad that one was."

The case came before the High Court in April 1995. The plaintiffs consisted of 34 residents, representing a cross section of middle Ireland.

They included "12 farmers, 12 housewives, a carpenter, a factory owner, a mushroom grower, a senior citizen, retired builder, factory worker, auctioneer, a merchant and an agricultural adviser".

Most among them climbed aboard a minibus on the first morning of the hearing, and went in search of a life free of potholes.

During the hearing, Cavan county council objected to the viewing of a video of the road.

Judge Mella Carroll said she would travel to see for herself how bad things were.

She visited on Easter Monday morning and whether or not the sight of pothole hell influenced her decision, she ruled in favour of the residents in December 1996.

The council was not best pleased. An appeal to the Supreme Court was lodged on the basis that the ruling would have implications for all roads.

The court agreed and upheld the appeal. The residents had to pay their own costs, which were met largely by fund-raising. A bond system initiated four years previously was called in, yielding £20,000 from local people and businesses.

By then, the road in question had been properly repaired, en route to a texture that would do a baby's bottom proud, but there was still fight left in the residents.

Eight of them appealed to the European Court that they had been subjected to unusual delay in receiving judgement in the first instance. The court agreed, and awarded them costs and 1,000. The cheques began arriving last week. At last, the road was rising to meet those who had embarked on citizen action.

CRAG is no more, having gone the way of the potholes. For Declan Fitzpatrick, the whole affair has been an education in how the state and its organs work.

"We had to go through the legal process which is something most ordinary people are afraid of.

But it was a last option; we had no other choice then."

"It took a sight of time, " says Des O'Reilly, "but it was worth it in the end, even if by then it was just making a point."

Kevin Ludlow says the road couldn't be smoother. "We have the road now we should have had all the time. It's the sort of thing that we are supposed to be paying our taxes for."