A local councillor has raised his concerns over the lack of salting around towns and villages across Co Monaghan. Sinn Fein's Colm Carthy highlighted the frustration felt by constituents at this week's sitting of Monaghan County Council following recent spells of heavy frost. In some instances, schools were forced to close due to the treacherous conditions of roads and footpaths which weren't salted in some cases until after 9am.
Speaking to Northern Sound, Cllr Carthy believes it is vital to have a more "robust" plan in place for town centres and priority routes when incidents like this arise. While praising council staff for the work they carried out, Cllr Carthy believes that the removal of town councils across Co Monaghan is to blame for this problem.
"This is another example of where the removal of our own councils by Fine Gael has resulted in reduced services," explained Cllr Carthy. "Fine Gael were warned of this before the abolition of town centres, they were warned that services would be reduced and the smaller scale projects in town centres would be impacted by the loss of dedicated staff and a dedicated local authority for a specific area, yet they still went ahead for whatever reasons. They can try and justify it now but I think we can all agree that it was a poor decision when it was made at the time and we've been reaping the negative effects of that since."
