17% of Clare roads gritted as Council works ‘at full capacity’

CLARE County Council is working at full capacity to grit 17% of the road network in the county, local councillors have been told.

Senior engineer, John Leahy confirmed at a council meeting on Monday priority routes were salted twice a day and during the weekend with the help of ten drivers in recent days.

Mr Leahy said 25 pick up trucks came into the yard on Monday morning and left with salt for areas in municipal districts.

“It is not possible to cover the whole road network. We cover the national primary, national secondary, most regional roads and busy local primary roads.

“We are operating at full capacity. We emptied a full salt barn in the last week, but we have adequate salt stocks in place for the cold snap. It is a difficult situation over the last few days because of weather conditions.

“We are salting 17% of the road network,” he said.

Councillor Joe Garrihy said rural roads are being badly affected by the freezing conditions, notwithstanding the fact the authority was gritting the main arteries.

“We are having an awful lot of challenges on rural roads trying to get on to main roads.

Councillor Gabriel Keating said people in West Clare had a particularly tough weekend because the roads were very bad.

“Local roads are very important. Some regional roads were not gritted. There were problems for schools, a bus went off the road, a milk truck couldn’t get up a hill. There have been so many issues, which hopefully were rectified by Monday morning.

“It was an emergency, it was well publicised in advance we would have a bad weekend. I am not blaming anyone in particular, but I would hope it would not happen again,” he said.

Chief Executive, Pat Dowling said the council is deploying all the resources at its disposal to the best of its ability.

Mr Dowling pointed out roads in places like West Clare were gritted at 7pm and 4am in the morning, which will intensify in as much as is possible.

“We will try and cover as much roads as we can. That doesn’t mean that every patch of tarmac will be gritted, that will not be possible, particularly coming off main sections of local roads.

“If there is a particular black ice spot, let us know and we will see if we can respond.”

Councillor P J Ryan recalled he had proposed months ago that bins would be provided outside all national schools with sand and grit, which hadn’t been done.