Mayo County Council this week introduced new bye-laws to reduce the speed limit in 114 estates throughout the county to 30km per hour, this new slew of estates follows a reduction in the speed limit in 99 estates in 2015, and the council will be considering a further list of estates for implementation of a similar speed limit later this year.
In the West Mayo Municipal District area 17 estates saw their speed limits reduced, in the Ballina Municipal District area 39 estates had their speed limits reduced, in the Claremorris Municipal District 27 estates had the limit reduced to 30km per hour, and in the Castlebar Municipal District 31 estates had the speed limit reduced under the new bye-laws.
Fianna Fáil's Ballina based councillor Annie Maye Reape welcomed the bye-laws, saying: "A lot of work has been done on this in the county to increase safety for everybody and especially children, we have 114 estates here and we are going to look for even more. I think we should compliment all involved in this because it's a really good thing we've done for the people in Mayo." Independent councillor Gerry Ginty, while welcoming the reduction, did have concerns about how they would be enforced, saying: "How will it be policed and how will it be enforced, we have loads of laws but they have to be enforced, some people will still not pay attention." A similar sentiment was echoed by Westport based Independent councillor Christy Hyland, who added: "I welcome any traffic calming measure, if signs can do it, brilliant. But there aren't the resources there to police it."
Fianna Fáil council whip Cllr Damien Ryan told the meeting it was time the council started moving towards having a blanket approach to every estate in the county, saying: "Then we would have an acceptance that once you're in Mayo the speed limit in all estates is 30km per hour irrespective if it's Castlebar, Westport, or Ballina. We need to move towards this because having different rules and regulations for different areas just leads to confusion."
