County braced for Christmas lockdown

County braced for Christmas lockdown


Secondary roads will not be salted for two weeks

Rowan Gallagher

MAYO County Council have admitted that their road salt levels are ‘seriously depleted’ and as a result gritting procedures all over the county will have to be scaled back in the coming weeks, regardless of the weather conditions.
At yesterday’s December meeting of the local authority, Mayo County Engineer, Joe Beirne, confirmed that the local authority will not be able to salt any roads to the same standard they have managed during the last two weeks of severe snow and frost, and that certain roads will simply not get salted to save supply.
The council needs 150 tonnes of salt per day to do a full run of the county as set out in the Winter Maintenance Plan but can now only use 50 tonnes per day after the last two weeks of freezing weather.
“With this recent bad run of weather the initial stocks of salt are very seriously depleted and for the next 10 to 20 days our salt use will have to be very restricted. On Thursday we had 1,000 tonnes left and we are now starting to reduce usage to 50 tonnes per day-right now there are 700 tonnes left. This is going to lead to big problems and life is going to be very difficult,” said Mr Beirne said at Aras an Chondae yesterday.
Two prolonged weeks of poor weather conditions nationally has left the National Roads Authority (NRA) with a significant dent in its salt supply and they have now decided to ration the remaining stock.
The NRA took over supplying local authorities with salt after last year’s freeze when many who sourced their own supply ran out of salt.
While the council maintains that they should be able to salt national primary routes, secondary roads will not be get any salting in order to conserve the supply until additional salt can be sourced by the NRA in the coming week.
Speaking to The Mayo News, a spokesperson for the NRA claimed that an additional 20,000 tonnes of salt was on the way from the Mediterranean but that it will be two weeks before it gets to Ireland.
“What we had was a historical event that couldn’t have been predicted. We had enough stock but we were racing through it over the last two weeks, bringing stocks down. We had 55,000 in November and as soon as the first shipment of salt comes in there will be more to follow, It but the next two weeks will be tight,” the NRA spokesperson confirmed.
Minister for Environment John Gormley has made  €15m available to fund the extra salt needed and Mayo County Council has applied for €2m of this.
However, County Engineer Joe Beirne has conceded that he doesn’t expect to get anywhere near that figure, meaning Mayo County Council could be left having to tap into next year’s budget to pay for salting roads over the Christmas period. This will be coupled with a 10 per cent decrease in the amount of funding that is set to come in for road projects.
The County Engineer has confirmed that if this were to happen, road maintenance programmes for next year could be put in jeopardy due to the lack of money available.
Fine Gael Councillor Michelle Mulherin warned that a lack of salting could leave rural communities in isolated.
“It isn’t good enough that the stocks are running out in the run up to Christmas. People will be travelling long distances to get onto roads that are covered in ice.
This will be cutting off certain communities for prolonged periods of time,” Cllr Mulherin said.
Sinn Féin’s Gerry Murray attacked the NRA, calling them ‘a disgrace’ and suggested that Mayo County Council should source its own supply of salt to solve the problem.
“The performance of the NRA is an absolute disgrace. The main problems will be seen in rural Ireland for the next two weeks - in other countries, things don’t just grind to a halt.
“There are children in rural villages that can’t even get to school and now they are a week or so behind in the curriculum. I don’t see why we don’t hire some agricultural contractors to help with this,” concluded Cllr Murray.
The earliest that additional salt could arrive in Ireland will be after Christmas Day. Sub-zero temperatures are again forecast for the west in the coming days with a possibility of a severe ground frost as early as Thursday night.