Overhanging trees 'now a big issue' on Mayo's roads

Overhanging trees along roadsides are now as big an issue as overgrown hedges, a local councillor has claimed.

Fine Gael Cllr Jarlath Munnelly raised the matter at last week's meeting of Ballina Municipal District when he called on Mayo Co Council to hire a machine to cut overhanging trees on roads in the district.

“It’s not just about hedge-cutting anymore because there are an awful lot of overhanging trees. On the way to Killala there are trees all planted by Mayo Co Council, they don’t belong to landowners but it always falls back on them to cut them. We are getting all these calls about the trees and the matter won’t be addressed with the hedge-cutting programme. We need something more substantial to manage it.” 

Cllr John O’Hara, who works for the ESB, added: “We saw with the power outages recently that it was all down to timber. There is no one addressing the timber problem. It is above in Dublin this matter should be addressed, because they are giving permission for trees all over the place and then they are creating these problems, so it is no good blaming the ESB or the council.” 

Cllr Michael Loftus said: “It is embarrassing to read that a local businessman in the Castlebar area had to employ a machine to clear trees in certain areas because his buses were getting damaged. Where is the council's tree cutting policy?”

Cllr Annie May Reape said she understood that a stock-take on all dangerous trees was to be made after Storm Éowyn in January, but "a lot of dangerous trees were hanging down after the storm of last week". 

Ballina municipal engineer Orla Bourke told the meeting that the council is currently undertaking a countywide dangerous tree survey and has written to landowners to cut down any overhanging trees on their lands. She also suggested that the councillors might "consider providing a €5,000 fund each [from their discretionary funding] for tree-cutting each year".

Cllr Loftus said an extra €250,000 from last year’s council budget went to tree-cutting and highlighted Abbeytown in Crossmolina as an area where there were problems with dangerous trees, while Cllr Annie May Reape said councillors already allocate some of their own funding to the cause.

• Published as part of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.