Tipperary County Council insist landowners are responsible for safety of roadside trees

In the wake of Storm Barra public representatives have been told clearly that landowners are responsible for roadside trees on their land.
At a meeting of Tipperary County Council on Monday Marcus O’Connor, Director of Services told public representatives that landowners were responsible for trees on their lands.
He was responding to a request made for a survey to be carried out on the condition of roadside trees in the county.
At the meeting, tributes were paid to council staff and all of the emergency services that responded during the storm.
Cllr Máirín McGrath suggested that a survey be carried out on the condition of roadside trees to identify trees that were unsafe.
She said that it was unfair on council staff to go out in very dangerous conditions during a storm to deal with trees on the public road.
Cllr McGrath said that a lot of that work could be carried out in better conditions if the survey was conducted.
Marcus O’Connor said he wanted to make it very clear to members that landowners were responsible for the trees on their land.
He told members that it was the responsibility of the landowners to inspect the trees on their lands and to ensure that they were safe and were not likely to be a danger to the public.
Marcus O’Connor said there was 6,000kms of roads in the county and it was not feasible for the local authority to carry out such a survey.
Carrying out such a survey, he said, would also introduce some ambiguity to the situation where there should be none.
Cllr David Dunne said there were a lot of dead trees on the roads during the storm and drivers had to go to the other side of the road to avoid them.
The Carrick-on-Suir councillor said that most landowners did their bit concerning roadside trees but he felt that where lands were rented that the same attention to trees was not given.
Cllr Michael Fitzgerald paid tribute to the council staff for the work they carried out during the storm.
He felt the council could do more to help out landowners with roadside trees when they decided to make trees safer on the side of the road.
Cllr Fitzgerald said that the council should give landowners some assistance with marshalling of the road when the work was being carried out.
He said that most of the landowners made an effort and he would like to see the council help them out with traffic arrangements when work to make roadside trees safe was being carried out.
Cllr Fitzgerald said that a lot of this work could be carried out on fine days and not in the very dangerous conditions that existed during the storm.
Cllr John Crosse said there should be a partnership approach in relation to the safety of roadside trees.
PARTNERSHIP
He believed that the council should enter a partnership with the landowners, the emergency services and utility providers to ensure that the issues concerned were sorted out.
Cllr Roger Kennedy said there should be a national policy regarding how to deal with making roadside trees safe.
Cllr Michael Murphy said that he had used the emergency numbers provided by Tipperary County Council during the storm and he had to wait eighteen minutes for a reply.
The Clonmel councillor said that eighteen minutes was too long a period in a time of an emergency and he told officials that for anybody to have to wait that long was not good enough given the circumstances.
Cllr Murphy said that there should also be circumstances where the council could deviate from the designated lists of roads where salt spreading is conducted.
He told the meeting that an emergency worker in the area had been in touch with him during the recent storm requesting salt spreading on a road to allow him get into work.
However the salt spreading did not take place because the road in question was not on the designated list of roads for such work.
Cllr Siobhán Ambrose said discretion should be used to allow salt spreading take place on roads that were not on the list if the need arose.
She said such discretion would deliver a better response.
MANPOWER
In response to the members Marcus O’Connor said the council would not have the wholesale manpower to provide traffic assistance and diversions when landowners were working on roadside trees.

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