Farmers agree to help transport medical staff during icy weather

Medical personnel having difficulty in getting to patients in isolated country areas when roads are impassable through snow and ice have a new ‘force’ to call on for assistance – Westmeath’s farmers.

At IFA meetings around the county over the last two weeks, farmers have agreed to use their tractors or four-wheel-drives to ferry public health nurses or doctors to the homes of neighbours needing care, but whose homes aren’t accessible via ordinary cars.

Westmeath IFA member JJ Farrell, at Monday’s meeting of the Transportation and Planning Strategic Policy Committee of Westmeath County Council, said that farmers’ minds have been put at rest over the insurance question, and that over the last two weeks, all IFA members have come on board.

“Following 2010, some of the district nurses found it impossible to get down some of the back roads and boreens, and some farmers brought them there,” he said, revealing that there is now a plan in place to avoid this happening again.

“Every farmer in the county has signed up to take those nurses or doctors to where they’re needed, and they’re covered by insurance,” he stated.

Council official Hugh O’Reilly confirmed that what is termed the ‘Community Resilience Project’ is now in place. Meanwhile, an assurance was given that when the weather turns cold, a programme for gritting of priority routes is in place.

Council engineer Michael Connolly told the meeting that all motorways and dual carriageways are treated by the NRA; the council then does the N4 to the county boundary at Rathowen. In total, he said, 367 kilometres of roads – excluding motorways and dual carriageways – are on the gritters’ routes.

The council spent €452,962 last winter covering 61 ice or snow ‘events’.

The peak expenditure came in the winter of 2009/2010 when €686,880 was spent on 76 events, the council has said.