Council staff worked 2,000 hours gritting Tipperary's priority roads during recent snow

Tipperary County Council spread an estimated 2,720 tonnes of salt worth €400,000 on roads across the county to make them safe during the snow and ice weather earlier this month .

That's according to a report on the Council’s response to the weather emergency between January 4 and 10 that was presented to the local authority’s public representatives at their monthly meeting in Nenagh on January 13.

The report outlined by Senior Council Engineer James Murray detailed how the Council’s response to the worst snow and ice conditions to hit the county in seven years cost an estimated €1m.

He reported that the early estimated costs for rolling out the Winter Service Programme of gritting and salting 12 priority routes during the emergency amounted to around €800,000 with €400,000 spent on salt alone.

A total of 2,120 tonnes of salt were spread on the Winter Service Programme routes between January 3 and 10 with approximately a further 600 further tonnes used on other roads throughout the week. The Council has since replenished its salt supplies.

The cost of working on clearing and salting roads and footpaths across the five districts not included in the Winter Service Programme was likely to be in the region of over €200,000.

Mr Murray pointed out that each council service that was involved in responding to the weather emergency incurred extra spending significantly above the norm that will impact their budgets this year.

He informed councillors the Council’s winter service drivers covered well over 20,000km of roads in their salt gritting work during the weather event.

There were three mobilisations a day with 3,360km of road treated daily at the height of the bad weather between Monday, January 6 and Wednesday, January 8 when temperatures plunged as low as -7 and -9 degrees Celsius.

He reported that a total of 2,000 accumulated hours were worked by the Winter Service Programme team alone during the emergency and this didn’t include support provided to road district teams later in the week.

Mr Murray described how it was necessary at times for council staff to “pivot away” from their priority work to support people in difficulty in communities.

This ranged from assisting with freeing a family from a stranded car on a local road and helping a family to visit a dying relative to supporting a number of families and their communities during funerals, burials and wakes.

“We hope we struck the correct balance between the overarching goal of getting the wider county cleared and also meeting communities’ other important needs.”

Civil Defence response

Mr Murray also reported on the support Civil Defence members gave to the medical services and public. This included providing transport for medical staff at Tipperary University Hospital, as well as mental health, community care and public health staff.

Civil Defence members transported patients to oncology, dialysis and medical appointments, brought public health nurses to appointments with vulnerable patients like new-borns.

They also delivered essential medical supplies, prescriptions, personal care items to people and delivered shopping to a number of isolated and vulnerable people.

And they delivered hot meals to people in sheltered housing and meals on wheels customers and assisted council staff to check on a number of council premises.

Fire Service was busy

Meanwhile, Tipperary Fire & Rescue Service attended over 60 call outs by midday on Tuesday, January 7. The number of calls reduced toward the latter part of the week.

During the debate that followed Mr Murray’s report, Clogheen Fine Gael Cllr Marie Murphy recounted how council staff helped to clear snow and ice from the roadway between the main gate and front door of St Theresa’s Hospital in Clogheen to enable ambulances, staff and delivery vehicles to access the hospital.

“If that hadn’t happened, they wouldn’t have been able to get oxygen in for patients,” Cllr Murphy pointed out.

Carrick-on-Suir Sinn Féin councillor David Dunne asked if the Council requested the Defence Forces for assistance and requested other local authorities in areas not badly affected by the snow and ice for equipment and manpower that week.

Council CEO Sinead Carr responded that the Council did request the Defence Forces for assistance. That request went to a central system and the Defence Forces decided what areas to deploy the army to help out.

She noted there were areas in Cork, Kerry and Limerick that were in greater need of help.

In relation to seeking help from other local authorities, Ms Carr said councils in counties not as badly impacted had their own issues to deal with that week.