Supplies of salt for roads running low

There are just 15,000 tonnes of salt left in the State to keep key main roads open, before the next shipment is due on Wednesday, the National Roads Authority confirmed this afternoon.

The authority which had been using up to 5,000 tonnes a day in the recent cold spell said the average use of salt is between 2,500 to 3,000 tonnes per day.

At a worse case scenario this would leave the State with just three days supply of salt for use over the coming clod period – or six days in a best case situation.

The delivery date of next Wednesday is plus or minus one day, and the roads authority will have lorries waiting at the dock from Tuesday. A 10 hour period has been allocated to get the salt from the docks to its intended spreading area.

The authority acknowledged the tight timeframe and said salt supplies would have to be conserved by local authorities and used only on key national and strategic routes.

The situation has been criticised by Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney, who insisted lessons had not been learned since last year’s cold snap.

Mr Coveney said plans should have been in place to distribute salt and grit to housing estates as local roads as well as to local authorities for key strategic routes.

He said if this required the State purchase more salt, then it should have been done. He said if it meant Government or even housing estates had to pay for their own salt, provision should have been made for this. Mr Coveney said the other option was to plan to “shut whole areas down”.

“This is what the Minister for Environment provided an extra €15 million for, the money should be spent on doing the job” he said.

However the National Roads Authority repeated its view that current temperatures created an “unprecedented situation”. A spokesman said the recent cold snap had affected different parts of the country at different times, requiring the shipment of salt around the country at short notice. “It is a movable feast and salt is on the menu” he said.

Spokesman Sean O’Neill said 80,000 tonnes was ordered by the authority last July, of which 55,000 tonnes was delivered by November. This combined with a stock level of about 30,000 tonnes which was in excess of the average of about 65,000 tonnes used in a whole winter. He said spreading of salt had only begun in October and had rapidly increased in November. Over a year’s supply has been used in the past three months.