Small ‘Welcome to Mayo’ signs branded ‘daft’

‘MISERABLE’ Councillors have been critical of ‘Welcome to Mayo’ signs.

Small ‘Welcome to Mayo’ signs ‘daft’


Edwin McGreal

The Chairman of a Mayo County Council strategic committee has slammed as ‘daft’ National Road Authority policy to make all  welcome signs at the various Mayo borders smaller, as seen in the Charlestown sign in the accompanying picture.
Cllr Jarlath Munnelly made the comments at last week’s Roads and Transportation Strategic Policy Committee meeting in Castlebar after another councillor described the sign on the new Charlestown by-pass as ‘miserable’.
“There’s a sign coming into Mayo on the Charlestown by-pass saying ‘Welcome to Mayo’ and it is the most miserable sign in Mayo,” said Cllr Blackie Gavin. “It is like something with just one leg. We have major signs all over our county welcoming people and surely to God we can produce something better. It wouldn’t lift your heart to be returning to Mayo and to see that. It is disgraceful. I know it is probably the NRA that are behind it.”
Castlebar-based Cllr Gavin added that other larger signs in the country were the way forward.
“There’s a massive sign coming into Shannon saying ‘Welcome to Shannon’ and there’s no way you’d miss it. There’s two big signs coming into Dungarvan as well, one in English and one in Irish. Signs are important.”
However Tony McNulty, Senior Engineer at the Roads Design Office informed the meeting that NRA policy was to regulate all such county signs to the size of the one on the new Charlestown by-pass.
“I can tell you that the bigger ones around the county are actually the wrong ones and they will be replaced in due time for smaller ones like the one in Charlestown, which is the correct one. You will see Roscommon will have a slightly bigger sign, but that is because Roscommon in Irish [Rós ComΡin] is a larger word. As the sign posts are done from place to place, the big signs will be removed.”
Cllr Munnelly slammed such a policy.
“This is daft. The big signs worked well from not only a notice point of view but they allowed each county to perhaps put the county’s website on it. What is happening is daft, there’s no other word for it.”