ENABLING landowners to cut roadside hedges and ditches is of the highest importance to improve visibility and road safety in rural areas, multiple Clare cllrs have claimed.
In what was the last motion of the July meeting of Clare County Council, cllr Conor Ryan (FF) called on the local authority to “enable landowners to maintain roadside hedges and permit the cutting of roadside hedges on bends and junctions on local roads in the closed season to enhance visibility and road safety”.
The Bodyke man called for amendments to be made to the Wildlife Act 1976 throughout the popular discussion, enquiring “Has a landowner any right to cut roadside hedges for road safety reasons? A household can cut their garden hedge, they are horticulturalists after all. Has the landowner any right or is that forbidden? In the event that there should be an accident on a blind bend and the land isn’t cut, can the landowner be held responsible? In the interest of road safety, discreet and limited hedge cutting should be carried out in sympathy with biodiversity”, the East Clare representative added.
Whitegate native cllr Pat Burke (FG) seconded the motion and spoke from personal experience with the issue. “Two weeks ago now a man in my own area was putting a house up for sale with terribly dangerous bends leading up to the house. He was afraid that if people came to view the house, they’d be put off by the dangerous nature of the three or four very bad bends approaching the house. So I said as a former cllr now in the Dáil might say, leave it with me. I put on the hedge cutter and cut these couple of bends in the interests of road safety. I don’t expect the council to go down every highway and byway but I’ll continue making the roads safer while I’m around”, Burke added.
Offering a West Clare perspective on the matter, cllr Dinny Gould (IND) stated “I don’t understand why landowners can cut thousands of acres of hay and silage in fields where there’s a lot of hares, birds and pheasants. I can’t understand why ditches can’t be cut. The Wildlife Act 1976 should be looked into”, the independent suggested.
Cllr Paul Murphy (FG) called the current regulations which prohibit the cutting of hedges from the first of March to August 31st “crazy” and argued “Common sense has to prevail. I’m yet to see a bird nesting at the side of a busy road”. Cllr Alan O’Callaghan (FF) echoed these sentiments, pointing out that roadside hedges account for less than five percent of Clare’s nesting areas.
Carmel Kirby, Director of Service for Transportation, Climate Action, Environmental and Emergency Services, provided an official reply to the motion, pointing out that while Clare County Council does have the power to cut hedges posing a risk during the closed season, “the legislation does not permit a local authority to divest that power to further third parties, i.e. landowners”. At the meeting, the director acknowledged that further amendments to the relevant act should be made in the interests of landowners.
