Local trees are ready to 'fall out onto the road'

There are trees ready to "fall into the road" in Leitrim after Storm Éowyn, a council meeting heard this week.

Cllr Roisin Kenny stated that there "was forestry that had been felled by the storm. They went in and removed most of it but left the outer layer of the trees and they are like matchsticks hanging out across the road."

She said that it was "inevitable that the trees will fall into the road".

Cllr Kenny had initially raised a motion about the road from Aughavas to Greagh Cross, saying there was a dangerous dip where the road meets the 201 at Ruari McCabe's cross in Aughavas.

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Cllr Paddy O'Rourke stated that the "subsidence in the road as you approach McCabe's junction is largely associated with the hauling of heavy loads of timber out of that district" and stated that if a car approached the "decline at speed, it would flip."

On the issue of the trees, he said that there were outages in "parts of county Leitrim yesterday (Monday 26) as a result of wind blow" adding there were "prolonged outages in different parts of the country. This is something that hasn't gone away and there is a lot of tidying up to be done."

He said that "that narrow fringe of timber they are in the habit of leaving along the perimeter of where they have felled everything inside - I don't know what the logic of it is."

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The official response stated that the road on the RMG programme for 2026 (Rural Regeneration and Development Fund (RRDF)) and the patching unit will be scheduled to make minor repairs at the junction where it meets the R201.