Signs defaced

Sign of the times

Michael Duffy

MAYO County Council road signs have been the victim of a spate of graffiti attacks in recent weeks in the Castlebar area – and a Council engineer has admitted that it may be another few weeks before the signs are cleaned up or replaced.
The brazen offenders even had the gall to sign their initials on one of the signs (PM), knowing that the Gardaí had little chance of catching them.
Mayo County Council engineer, Ms Ann Sweeney, said the vandalism is a real inconvenience to the Council as the damaged signs will more than likely have to replaced.
“We have tried cleaning the signs before but the reflectivity of the signs can be affected and they often can become redundant at night time due to this. The problem is it can take a number of weeks, especially in summer time, to order the signs as they have to be up to the requisite NRA standard.”
Ms Sweeney added that directional signs are about to be replaced on the whole of the N17 and she believes that new signage will also be put in place on the N5 in the near future.