ROAD GRITTING:AS THE amount of rock salt imported for gritting the roads rises to almost 20,000 tonnes a week, the National Roads Authority (NRA) has confirmed it has so far only been able to find 9,000 tonnes at most for next week.
The NRA, which has been formally asked by Government to take a co-ordinating role in the sourcing of salt, said its normal suppliers were working flat out as demand in Ireland and Britain reached record highs.
NRA chief executive Fred Barry was contacting road authorities across Europe to see if spare supplies were available. However, a spokesman said many countries had expressed concern over their own requirements.
Mr Barry said salt would be found, but it could be the end of next week or even the start of the following week before it would arrive in Ireland. The Government and the NRA have advised local authorities they should source crushed stone and other types of grit locally.
While grit is not as effective without salt, the NRA said it would provide traction. “We are in a very difficult position. The difficulty is that the status will continue until the weather turns and/or we can get more salt,” the spokesman said.
Dublin City Council said the amount of salt available to it for gritting had reached a critically low level. A spokesman said stocks had fallen to just one day’s supply and efforts were yesterday being made to find materials anywhere in order to keep the city’s main travel arteries open.
He said the council would be operating a road-gritting service last night using a mixture of salt and other materials such as sand, which, it hoped, would ensure that 300km of main roads remained accessible to public transport, commuters and businesses.
Stocks of gritting materials had reached such low levels that the council was not in a position to treat secondary roads, housing estates or footpaths as main roads had to remain the priority.
Dublin City Council’s chief engineer Michael Phillips said that in the previous 24 hours, the council had used two days worth of salt for gritting. Mr Phillips said about 100 tonnes would be used on an average day in such weather, but that 250 tonnes had been used on Wednesday following a heavy fall of snow in the afternoon, which caused serious traffic and travel problems across the city.
"In the years 2000 to 2008, we only used a maximum of 500 tonnes of grit over a period of six months," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland. "This year over the 10 days of Christmas we used 1,000 tonnes.
“Our stockpile is normally 1,300 tonnes so the city is well geared and we plan well in advance for these kinds of occasions, but it is very difficult to decide if this is a major change which is going to be with us forever more.”
Matthews Coaches, a Louth bus company which said it carried 1,500 people a day on its services around Julianstown, Bettystown and Laytown, Co Meath, said yesterday it had bought its own gritting machine to help make the roads passable. The machine cost €2,000 and the salt, which the company got from Lisburn, Co Antrim, cost about €1,000.
However, company director Paddy Matthews told The Irish Timesthat the salt had run out very quickly and, following failure with beach sand, the company was now "in the same position as everyone else, waiting for salt".