Members of the Thurles – Templemore Municipal District have called for footpaths and carparks to be salted during any future cold snap.
It follows a number of incidents last Saturday when overnight rain followed by freezing temperatures left many routes in a treacherous condition.
This week’s meeting of the District saw a number of councillors call for salt to be made available to local businesses so that they could treat footpaths in towns across the area.
Roscrea Cllr Shane Lee said Saturday was a very busy day at the Nenagh Minor Injuries Unit with over 60 people attending with the majority of them reporting fractures as a result of falls.
He says the local authority needs to salt more of the roads and footpaths across Tipperary.
“We do one-fifth of the roads in the county so that leaves the people in the rural areas unable to access the minor roads that take them to the towns. That’ve very alarming.
“So its very important that we change as a local authority with the climate change because we’re going to unfortunately see more and more of this happening.”
The meeting heard repeated calls for salt to be provided to local businesses so that they could treat footpaths outside their premises.
Councillor Lee says this should be extended to other groups as well.
“The time of the real bad snow we had great community spirit coming from the farming sector. All of these people are committed to their communities so a small bit of joined up thinking to see what’s the best possible outcome to try and help everybody
I totally accept that we have 5,000 kilometres of roads in Tipperary – but we need to be doing more than one-fifth of them.”
Meanwhile this was also a topic of concern for members in the Tipperary Cahir Cashel Municipal District.
They wanted more salting around the entire district but were told the winter maintenance plan is at maximum capacity.
Local representatives expressed specific concerns at the lack of salt on footpaths around schools that were not on a main road.
However, the executive was clear no more would be possible without a significant increase in funding with the programme “maxed out”.