Rotten crash barriers spark plea for funding

No money is available to replace rotten crash barriers on the Donegal Town to Mountcharles Road, it has been learned.

The issue arose at today's meeting of the Donegal Municipal District when Cllr Noel Jordan warned another accident could happen if the matter was not addressed.

In December 1999 Paul Chapman (34) and his son Sean (9) died when their car went into the sea close to a pier outside the village. It happened on a stretch of road that would be torn out in bad weather.

Cllr Jordan said concerns about the condition of crash barriers along shore fronts and in particular the one on the Shore Front Road outside Mountcharles on the N56.

"All the upstands are rotten and eventually they are going to give and fall into the sea. Is there any possibility we could cast the upstands in concrete because the saltwater is eroding the metal and it is coming away from the base?"

He added he and other councillors had raised issues about the condition of such barriers but were told there was a huge cost involved and no funding mechanism for them.

"Unfortunately crash barriers are put there for a reason, usually because there was a fatality there and that's the reason the one in Mountcharles was put in. I know they are a huge expense but they need to be repaired," he said

Mark Sweeney, area manager, roads and transportation said the council would look at the crash barriers in question but added the upstands could not be replaced by concrete as they were designed to deflect and fall away and separate from the barrier so it then acted like an elastic band when it got hit.

"Crash barriers are quite expensive, they need to be designed and very few people are designing them at the minute. We're struggling to get designer teams to come in and look at them and qualified contractors to do the repairs on the barriers that are damaged. We're working on it but there is not a lot of funding for crash barriers at the moment.

Cllr Jordon described that scenario as "ridiculous".