After all Dempseys Media spin we ARE out of salt

Sponge Bob

http://www.irishweatheronline.com/2010/12/treatment-of-roads-reviewed-as-salt.html

The National Roads Authority (NRA) has directed local authorities to conserve salt stocks, iWeather Online has learned.


The treatment of roads will be restricted to Motorways, National Primary and National Secondary roads. Regional and local roads will not be treated until further notice.


At least four local authorities have issued statements this evening confirming the news.

In Westmeath, the County Council announced tonight: "Westmeath County Council has been requested by the National Roads Authority to restrict its usage of salt to 35 tonnes per night for the foreseeable future. This is a severe restriction as 100 tonnes of salt is required to treat the identified Priority Routes within the county. In order to comply with this restriction, it is necessary for the Council to further prioritise routes for treatment and in this regard, ONLY NATIONAL PRIMARY AND NATIONAL SECONDARY ROUTES WILL BE TREATED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Furthermore, these routes will be treated with a mixture of salt and sand, which is not as effective a de-icer as pure salt.

Dannyboy83

Once is bad, but twice in a row is unforgivable.

Dempsey is dangerously incompetent.
He should be dismissed promptly, even if it's only for a few months until the GE.

(Is it going to be Malta again this year?)

Bullseye1

What about the people in the NRA? When are we going to stop blaming politicians for these mistakes. There are large numbers of overpaid people running the NRA. Some of these people need to be sacked.

Dempsey will be gone soon enough.

Poly

Bullseye1 wrote: »

Dempsey will be gone soon enough.

Not a second too soon, he should have gone after e-voting

donkey balls

After E voting:eek: this is a man who signed contracts with the private toll operators that if they dont break even the govt will foot the balance yet if they make a profit they get to keep it.:rolleyes:
As for salting the roads last saturday I had the pleasure of going on the tolled M8 before and all the way after the booths not one bit of salt/grit was sprayed there was a number of trucks/cars that slid off the road.
And yet with all the pot holes around the country some filled with water dempsey advise was to drive slowly into the pothole:mad: easy for him to say using the IAC choppers to get around the man is one arragant f**K.

Bob the Builder

And he'll be elected again.
And then they complain about lack of salt.

Can't have it both ways.

Poly

donkey balls wrote: »

After E voting:eek: this is a man who signed contracts with the private toll operators that if they dont break even the govt will foot the balance yet if they make a profit they get to keep it.:rolleyes:
As for salting the roads last saturday I had the pleasure of going on the tolled M8 before and all the way after the booths not one bit of salt/grit was sprayed there was a number of trucks/cars that slid off the road.
And yet with all the pot holes around the country some filled with water dempsey advise was to drive slowly into the pothole:mad: easy for him to say using the IAC choppers to get around the man is one arragant f**K.

I think Shane Ross explained the connection with NTR:

"Nor does the annual report breathe a word about director Raymond Potterton. A little digging reveals that Potterton was a business partner of Loman Dempsey, brother of none other than cabinet minister Noel Dempsey."

http://www.shane-ross.ie/archives/347/m50-directors-unmasked/

Tech3

Noel Dempsey has been a very poor transport minister. From the long delay of the motorway redesignations to remaining on holidays in January when there was a national crisis here due to the big freeze. And that is just roads.

Elevator

this is truely shocking stuff here

ye heard the craic in galway last freeze right?

the local council announced they were almost out of salt and they couldn't get it anywhere.

Padraig O'Ceidigh jumps on the net and sources salt that he sells onto the council at a profit

nobody in charge got the brains to google for salt then?

ridiculous

zig

Don't for one minute think these politicians can think for themselves, or do their own research. Im not saying it as a rant, I genuinely mean it, you will find that there is more insight and knowledge in any given situation on the likes of these forums than there is in the dail.

The one that really stood out for me recently was when a thread was started in the Irish Economics forum about the bailout constitution, I then showed this to a friend who started a thread on p.ie , this thread grew quite big,in the mean time a few emails were sent to TDs regarding the issue.
The very next day Pat Rabbite mentions it in a press release, and Sinn Fein mention later on that day.
It definitely came from here and p.ie and I was just stunned with the fact that not one of them or their assistants had thought of it.

bmaxi

It's not that politicians can't think for themselves, they can and do, it's that they don't think for anybody else. The general public rates very low in the esteem of Cabinet ministers except at election time, and rightly so, when, to those who would re-elect them the cost of fixing that pothole, at €85 billion, is considered good value.
The irony of it is, Dempsey was considered quite a good Minister for Environment but seems to have gone downhill ever since. I put this down partly to complacency and partly to the fact that big vote getters are invariably awarded with Ministries no matter how unsuitable they are. Dempsey, in his various manifestations, has been responsible for some of the biggest cock-ups in political history, including his commisioning of a company owned by Shell to do a feasibility report on the Corrib pipeline. Did his constituents say "this is a dangerous gob****e, we'll have to get rid of him"? Not a bit of it.

Sponge Bob

The Scottish Minister of Transport, faced with far more extreme weather and an inadequate response to same, has resigned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11976328

No chance of Dempsey doing anything principled

Snow and ice brought much of central Scotland's road network to a standstill earlier this week.

Check

Mr Stevenson had faced days of pressure over the way he handled the problems.


The SNP MSP said he "could have done much more to ensure that members of the public were better informed of the situation".

And over here we have Dempsey on the telly a week ago telling us that he had organised plenty of salt ...and not a wet week later the gritting of Regional Roads is cancelled.

View

Sponge Bob wrote: »

http://www.irishweatheronline.com/2010/12/treatment-of-roads-reviewed-as-salt.html

I am not sure how this can be said to be the Minister's fault.

I would presume that he didn't instruct the NRA to issue the notice but that it was an independent action by them.

Now, we can of course ask questions about the quantity of salt the county councils are supposed to keep for such emergencies but, again, it highly unlikely that a Minister sits there saying "I want you to keep X tonnes as your stockpile" rather than Y or Z tonnes.

At a guess, blame for this lies with whoever decided on a figure of X tonnes and the NRA for issuing the notice...

Einhard

I know it's de rigour to have a pop at the government, and Dempsey is admittedly an easier target than most, but Ireland has one of the largest networks of regional and local roads per area in the world. No country could be expected to stockpile enough salt to treat the thousands of kilometres of such roads on a regular basis over a period of weeks. The main roads have been gritted and aslted and kept open, and most of the regional routes also. Just look at what happened in Scotland, where entire sections of motorway were closed because of snow, for comparison. In this instance,t he response of the government and the local authorities hasn't been all that bad.

Einhard

Sponge Bob wrote: »

The Scottish Minister of Transport, faced with far more extreme weather and an inadequate response to same, has resigned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11976328

No chance of Dempsey doing anything principled


Check




And over here we have Dempsey on the telly a week ago telling us that he had organised plenty of salt ...and not a wet week later the gritting of Regional Roads is cancelled.

Sorry, but this is absolute balls. AFAIK, no section of Irish motorway has been closed for an extended period of time over the past few weeks. Most important regional and secondary routes have been salted, and remained passable. In Scotland, on the other hand, parts of the country were paralysed, with great swathes of the motorway network closed, and a significant proportion of regional routes impassable.

Tech3

Einhard wrote: »

Sorry, but this is absolute balls. AFAIK, no section of Irish motorway has been closed for an extended period of time over the past few weeks. Most important regional and secondary routes have been salted, and remained passable. In Scotland, on the other hand, parts of the country were paralysed, with great swathes of the motorway network closed, and a significant proportion of regional routes impassable.

I think your forgetting that weather conditions were a lot worse in Scotland than anything seen in this country. All our national roads would have easily been closed if we saw as much snowfall.

Einhard

tech2 wrote: »

I think your forgetting that weather conditions were a lot worse in Scotland than anything seen in this country. All our national roads would have easily been closed if we saw as much snowfall.

They weren't an awful lot worse. And seriously, you could use that argument for anything. Sure, we coped alright with the snow, but if the Gulf Stream stopped and we had a mini-ice age, we wouldn;t have coped then! Obviously an exaggeration, but you get my point. We can only expect people to deal with the situation that presents itself, and IMO the authorities did reasonably well in dealing with the recent snow. To state that, in your opinion, the government would have failed to cope with an entirely hypothetical scenario, and therefore heads ought to roll, is surely a tad unreasonable?

AlekSmart

Sorry, but this is absolute balls. AFAIK, no section of Irish motorway has been closed for an extended period of time over the past few weeks. Most important regional and secondary routes have been salted,

I`m equally sorry Einhard,but its far from "absolute balls" to be critical of Noel Dempsey`s media grandstanding in the immediate lead in to the Snowfalls.

Nobody is suggesting that ALL of this Republics roads could be treated,but my own experiences of the West/North/Central Dublin region revealed a markedly lower level of Road Treatment than I`ve ever experienced before.

In addition I would suggest that it is completely unacceptable that major housing estates in West Dublin have still not had any treatment,with some of them remaining trecherous up to this morning (13/12).

Any gritting which did take place was carried out during what seemed suspiciously like "Office Hours" with gritting trucks becoming embroiled with general traffic flows.

There has without doubt,to my mind,been a significant alteration to Road Treatment Policy by the Dept of Environment and the Dept of Transport.

All I would seek is a definitive ststement by the likes of Mr Dempsey to the effect that "This State has no more resources to assist it`s Citizens"

Such a statement would at least allow the same citizens to make alternative personal arrangements and to offer what structured communal aid could be mustered.

I had personal experience of being immobile in Dublin`s City Centre on Wed 1st Dec for almost 4 hours when the only assistance offered by the State was the snide remarks of a Garda and the eventual appearance after 4 hours of a single gritting truck.

We are constantly assured by Government spokespersons that our myriad Departments are stuffed to the gills with hugely intelligent,motivated planners and engineering whizz-kids to whom nothing is impossible.

Yet during this second and very accurately forecasted weather event of 2010 none of these magnificent folk could arrange to have major strategic junctions and assorted pinch-points treated.

By far and away the most problematic areas in such conditions were Junctions,Hills and other such areas of confluence which should have recieved attention but did not.

Even the much lauded efforts of Public Transport operators to cope were made in spite of rather than with the assistance of Local and National Authorities.

No doubt Mr Dempsey will soon be along to recommend Tolling the secondary roads network as a better way of securing the necessary coverage....:rolleyes:

aidan24326

Poly wrote: »

I think Shane Ross explained the connection with NTR:

"Nor does the annual report breathe a word about director Raymond Potterton. A little digging reveals that Potterton was a business partner of Loman Dempsey, brother of none other than cabinet minister Noel Dempsey."

http://www.shane-ross.ie/archives/347/m50-directors-unmasked/

Of Potterton Estate Agents no doubt. Good old Shane Ross, he's very adept at digging up these unseen links.


While I wouldn't necessarily lay all the blame at Dempsey's door for the salt situation, his record as a minister over the last number of years is shocking. He has overseen some very costly cockups, and as another poster said he retains a cabinet position because he's a vote getter, not because he's the best man for the job.

And therein lies one of our biggest problems with the party political system in this country, that it's all about the party. FF have always been party first, party second and party third (I'm guessing the people they're supposed to represent come in about 37th). You could be as thick as sh1t (a la Mary Coughlan) but if you're (somehow) pulling in the votes you'll do for us. Here's the keys to your Merc.

Dempsey is (or at least was) inexplicably popular in his own constituency and will probably be re-elected again.

oppenheimer1

If we had far less one off housing in this country events like these wouldn't be a problem.

Pete_Cavan

aidan24326 wrote: »

Dempsey is (or at least was) inexplicably popular in his own constituency and will probably be re-elected again.

Well the M3 has just opened he is still talking about having the rail line from Dublin to Navan open by 2015, not on the same scale as Healy Rea but he is clearly only interested in protecting his own seat at any cost.

bmaxi

View wrote: »

I am not sure how this can be said to be the Minister's fault.

I would presume that he didn't instruct the NRA to issue the notice but that it was an independent action by them.

Now, we can of course ask questions about the quantity of salt the county councils are supposed to keep for such emergencies but, again, it highly unlikely that a Minister sits there saying "I want you to keep X tonnes as your stockpile" rather than Y or Z tonnes.

At a guess, blame for this lies with whoever decided on a figure of X tonnes and the NRA for issuing the notice...

Why don't we have the CEO of the NRA running the Dept. of Transport then.
Typical FF apologist strategy, blame everybody else. If Dempsey is the Minister then the blame stops there.
If, in FF's trawl through their list of favoured applicants for plum jobs in the County Councils or the NRA, they can't come up with someone with opposable thumbs then maybe they should cast the net into more fertile waters, but then that would be acting in the national interest, something alien to FF despite their grandstanding of the past few days.