A councillor has said that officials in Transport Infrastructure Ireland overseeing Mayo "must be living on the moon" in relation to a response that was received to his notice of motion, calling for the reduction in the speed limit at the junction of Ardboley North on the Claremoris Road in Balla from 80km to 60km per hour.
Independent councillor Michael Kilcoyne had put forward a motion for the February meeting of the Castlebar Municipal District calling on the council officials to initiate discussions with TII to have the speed limit at the location reduced and to have a progress report ready for the April meeting of the district.
In a written response to the motion, it was stated that: "The TII Regional road safety engineer has advised that the N60 at Ardboley is not on the HD/15 high collision location database with the collision rate being twice below what would be expected."
Responding at the February meeting of the district, Cllr Kilcoyne said: "I just want to say, that I read the report that was attached to this from the TII in Mayo; if you are to look at it, what they are saying is, there isn't enough people killed, there isn't enough accidents at that junction to justify taking it down to 60km per hour.
"They must be living on the moon like; the report that they circulated said that the level of accidents isn't enough to justify reducing it to 60km, so in other words, somewhere in their heads and their minds, there must be a figure, be it 10 or 15 or 20 people, that have to be badly injured or killed at a location before they reduce the speed limit and that is why I am saying they are not living in the real world, because that's not how it happens. It is supposed to be about safety; it is a classic answer, not enough people being killed there, we have to keep it at that speed until such time and then we'll reduce it."
Fine Gael councillor Cyril Burke said: "I raised it at our SPC (Roads and Transport Strategic Policy Committee ) meeting on Monday, it is a huge risk, we all know that, that Ardboley junction is a very risky area; the difficulty seems to be, from the TII point, that a lot of the accidents that took place there weren't documented. We know that they have taken place, Mayo County Council know, the residents know they have taken place.
"The signs have been demolished umpteen times, there is even a concrete structure that was demolished more than once and now the last day, we had a lorry that ploughed all the grass margin and if there was someone coming out at Ardboley, they were gone.
"I went on several deputations to the TII and we had public meetings out there, we did manage to get it reduced from 100km to 80km and the key thing they said was, they would keep it under review and that was the key word we were holding on to. What we are saying now is that we need to use that element of the review to reduce it to 60km, particularly in light of the accident that happened the last day."
His party colleague councillor Donna Sheridan also supported the call, saying: "Do we need someone else to die? We see this all the time; we are calling and calling and we see when someone ploughed through that junction the last day. The people on the ground don't want to be reducing speed limits for the craic.
"It is not something they do because they are bored on a Tuesday, it is something they do for public safety and for the people on our roads. It is about time people copped on and see there is lives at risk here, these things need to be reduced. It is not coming in here calling for another reason than we honestly believe that somebody is going to pass away and I can see it in Breaffy and here and whatever we need to do, we just have to do it and stop the rubbish going on."
