This article is from page 35 of the 2008-01-15 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 35 JPG
THE need for more staff and equip- ment dedicated to maintaining the Killaloe and Westbury areas of east Clare has prompted two council- lors to take the matter to the local authority.
Cllr Pascal Fitzgerald wants to see a road sweeper dedicated to keeping the roads of east Clare clean while Councillor Tony O’Brien wants council road workers who were let go before Christmas put back on the payroll.
Cllr O’Brien said that there is cur- rently a shortage of staff in the gen- eral operative section “and it shows in the state of the roads in Killaloe, Kilbane and Broadford. We cur- rently only have about half our full complement of operatives”.
At today’s meeting of the Killaloe Area Committee of the council, Cllr O’Brien will be calling for the num- bers to be brought back up.
“We let part time workers go at the end of November. They should be taken on again immediately,” he said.
Meanwhile, Cllr Pascal Fitzgerald will be raising the matter of clean- ing and sweeping at the same meet- ibahee
Currently, he said, a road-sweep- ing machine visits the Westbury es- tate about once a week.
“This is not nearly enough. The population of this area has grown so much in the last few years with Westbury, Shannon Banks and Ar- dnacrusha that we really need a dedicated sweeper that will be kept in east Clare and can come several times a week to each area that needs
it,’ the councillor said.
He pointed out that just over the bridge in the Limerick City Council controlled area “sweeping is done four times a week”’.
Cllr Fitzgerald is also raising the matter of the need for lights on the road between Ardnacrusha Post Of- fice and Barry’s Cross.
‘This is a very dark stretch of road but there are a lot of people walking and driving on it. It’s another area where the population 1s growing and we need lights from a safety point of view,’ Councillor Fitzgerald said.