CARLOW COUNTY COUNCIL:OFFICIALS IN the State's second smallest county have defended their attempts to grit the roads as freezing conditions continue to affect motorists.
Carlow County Council has 1,200km of roads, and the local authority said it was simply not realistic or possible, within budget and staff constraints, to keep all roads gritted all the time.
The situation in Carlow illustrates the scale, and cost, of the challenge faced by local authorities throughout the State as they struggle to deal with the coldest weather in 50 years.
Senior engineer with the council Brian O’Donovan said the priority was to grit the 103km of motorway and national primary roads that run through the county.
The council has three gritting trucks, operated by a rotating team of five drivers. They worked throughout the holiday season “even on Christmas Day and night” and “some of the lads missed having Christmas dinner with their families because they were out salting the roads”.
The council’s allocation for road gritting from the National Roads Authority for the year was €100,000 but they had “already spent €175,000”. Mr O’Donovan said the council had anticipated the cold spell and had prepared by filling its salt barn “to capacity with 350 tons of salt” before Christmas. But he said that “just to grit the county’s section of the M9 motorway and other national roads” required 35 tons a night. That left the council with only enough stock for 10 nights.
Mr O’Donovan said there are only three suppliers on the island of Ireland of rock salt used to grit roads. Carlow sent one of its trucks to the Irish Salt Mining Exploration Company in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim before Christmas to replenish stocks. But that company, which also supplies local authorities in Britain, now has a backlog of orders.