No easy solution to grass verge problems on Donegal minor roads, Municipal District told

The ever increasing challenge of keeping verges of rural roadsides trimmed to ensure the safety of traffic and walkers, is an ongoing challenge and “balancing act”, members of the Donegal Municipal District (MD) were told at the monthly meeting.

The matter was raised after Cllr Niamh Kennedy spoke of the situation at the High Road in Kilcar.

She said that these matters needed to be brought to a conclusion, as they appeared every year, especially at this time, where growth was at its highest.

“Some of these roads are very dangerous in sections,” she explained.

It was time that these safety issues were taken away from the roads budget and that they were dealt with separately,” she suggested.

“It is a bit like the salting of some of these roads in the wintertime, and we are getting lots of calls as councillors. There are some local people that voluntarily cut some of the verges, but not all are doing it.”

Cllr Niamh Kennedy later told the paper:

“This is something that comes up every year, year on year and has done for decades. But this is something that really needs to be looked at in detail and perhaps a policy within the roads SPC to deal with this.

“Our main roads are all ok. They are quite wide. You will not get much grass growing out into the main roads. It is the smaller and local roads that are the issue, off the beaten.

“These are the ones that the tourists travel on and the locals walk on and the roads that the cyclists use as well.

“This is the issue that we are having at the minute and it is a serious health and safety issue, when people are walking on the roads and there are many people doing it, you can’t see them because the hedges are that high and it is not even the hedges, it is the grass verges that I am speaking about.

“It is not Parks and Wildlife (a reference to certain seasonal cutting restrictions), it is just a case of cutting the grass at the side to ensure that somebody is not going to fall into a ditch or get hurt or a car can actually pull in and let someone else pass by.

Mark Sweeney, the MD’s acting area manager roads and transportation explained that the maintenance grass verges on roads saw the same problems and issues, throughout the country.

As soon as the grass started growing, the complaints started coming in, he told councillors.

“It is very much a balancing act,” he admitted, adding that unless there was a safety issue such as vision lines at a junction, they could not facilitate such works at this time of the year.

He said that the matter was compounded by the thousands of kilometres of roads that were involved, it was not the season for cutting, as well as the fact that cutting regulations must be adhered to, unless such growth was deemed a safety issue and it was then acted upon.

He added that the complete roads budget for the MD would be swamped, if priority was given to the cutting of every grass verge.

It was suggested that a list of priorities areas, were collated, in advance, each season, for areas of growth and stretches of roads or junctions that could potentially develop into a safety issue.