This article is from page 30 of the 2008-11-18 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 30 JPG
AN east Clare councillor was among 47 landowners who received letters from the county council warning them that they have to cut back over- grown trees and hedges bordering their land or else run the risk of fac- ing prosecution.
But Fianna Fail councillor, Pat Hayes it transpired was sent the letter “in error’, it was confirmed by senior council staff.
The warning letters sent last month are getting a “positive response” with farmers rushing to get their hedge- rows cut, senior executive council engineer, Sean Lenihan said.
The council has now sent up to 50 more letters to landowners in the re- gion, he told a meeting last week of the Scarriff area committee of the
council.
The engineer started sending out the letters after councillors made nu- merous requests for hedgerows to be cut in the interests of traffic safety.
But the local authority does not have the resources to cut hedges everywhere in the county and it 1s proving to be a particularly expen- sive job in east Clare, as this part of the county has the largest number of roads and road frontage, Mr Lenihan explained.
“Landowners may not realise that they have an obligation in law to keep their own hedgerows trimmed. We want to get the message out there that wherever hedgerows are beside a public road, the landowners have an obligation to keep them cut back,” said Mr Lenihan.
Council workers in each area have
been asked to report any growth which is not cut back, Mr Lenihan said.
The senior engineer told councul- lors that there has been “ a very posi- tive response to our first letters, with people ringing us for names of com- panies who do the cutting and a big flurry of activity”.
He confirmed that one of the mem- bers of the area committee, Cllr Pat Hayes, had been sent a letter “in er- ror”.
Asked for clarification by the mem- bers about the same legislation ap- plying to dangerous trees overhang- ing the road, Mr Lenihan said that he would “back anyone who has to cut a limb of a tree which is a danger on the road but this is not a licence for people to go out and fell whole trees without a felling licence”.