Winter leaves Council with €2.5 million road repair bill

Barry Kehoe, Westmeath County Council's Director of Service for Transport and Planning, said at this week's special committee meeting that there was "no easy solution" to finding a balance between budgeting for road salting and leaving enough money aside for essential road repairs caused by the severe weather.Mr Kehoe said that repairs had been estimated at €2.56 million and that the projected bill had now been sent to the Department of Transport."It's a very difficult choice (between budgeting for gritting and repairs) and there is no easy way, there is no silver bullet," he said.Mr Kehoe was speaking in response to questions raised by councillors Frank McDermott and Paddy Hill who had asked if the road slating schedule could be rolled out to include what they described as "very dangerous" roads around Fore, Castlepollard and Oldcastle as well as Ballinahown, Mount Temple and Castledaly.Councillor McIntyre pointed out that the roads had often been salted only on a straight line and that parts of junctions "pressure points" had been left out."This schedule has been changed and for 20 years before that people knew where the roads had been salted and where they had not," said councillor McDermott."There are extremely dangerous areas around Fore School and Fore Church. Some local knowledge could help drivers to know where to and where not to salt. We need to have pressure points salted so that when you hit that point and you must stop the car, you can do it safely," he said.Mr Kehoe pointed put that the council had nine trucks to use for sanding and that any expansion of the routes which are currently treated during the cold weather would inevitably take away funding from the road repair budget.Council roads engineer Michael Connelly added that "a case could be made for every road". "We could do things a bit differently but we could also say that every untreated road could be classed as dangerous," he said.