Ray Butler (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I raise the issue of the gritting of secondary roads. We had bad frosty weather over the past few nights but secondary roads in my area near Athboy, Kildalkey, Enfield and Oldcastle are not being gritted. Some of them are on main bus routes. A few weeks ago, a bus went into the ditch in Kildalkey because there was no grit on the road and it could not get any traction on a bad corner. Yesterday, when I was dropping a friend home, we came across a lady with a young child who was after going into a ditch but, thankfully, nobody was hurt. Secondary roads all over Ireland are not being gritted. However, in Scotland, farmers are given a gratuity every year. They store grit, salt, gravel in a bank on their properties and when the bad weather hits, they grit 5 km or 6 km each in their communities. Everything moves in Scotland whereas in Ireland everything falls down because the local authorities do not have enough staff. We have to look at the Scottish way.