Kerry council calls for extension to hedge cutting season as roadside vegetation remains uncut

By Alastair Tibbs, The Kerryman

A Kerry councillor has urged the government to extend the hedge cutting season as potentially half of the county’s roadside vegetation remains uncut.

Councillor Dan McCarthy highlighted there was only two weeks left before hedge cutting was no longer allowed and called for the government to give landowners more time.

Cutting hedges and other vegetation that is not on agricultural or forestry land is forbidden under the Wildlife Act 1976 between the dates of March 1 and August 31.

The intention is to primarily protect nesting birds and other animals during breeding season.

“We’ve only weeks left to have the hedges cut back in the county,” said Cllr McCarthy at a recent council meeting, “looking around the place there seems to be just three-quarters or maybe only half cut.”

He claimed a local taxi company had spent €9,000 on car mirrors last year due to overgrown vegetation on the road.

Cllr McCarthy also called on the agriculture minister to withdraw subsidies from forestry companies who didn’t promise cut to vegetation on their land that bordered roads.

Of a survey of 10 separate forestry plots, he said no one had cut their vegetation along the roadside section of their property.

“It’s outlandish…we’ve been talking about high tech all day and this is a simple thing of cutting back the hedges and cutting back bushes in the county.”

Cllr Dan McCarthy previously described the county’s hedge cutting situation as a “total and utter disaster”.

In a September council meeting he said many of the private landowners had not attended to their roadside hedges yet.

Mr McCarthy had been sending out letters to landowners to ask them to cut the hedges on their property but struggled to get them to comply.

“I’ve sent out a good few of them now in the last few months and a lot of them have come back that they don’t own the property anymore or there’s some other issue, like the letter doesn’t get delivered. It can be very frustrating,” he said.

Cllr Teddy O’Sullivan echoed Cllr McCarthy’s comments, saying that generally local farmers were co-operating, but holiday homes and unregistered landowners were often at fault.

A member of An Garda Síochána had privately contacted Mr O’Sullivan to express his concerns over safety on the road. The extra few inches of visibility from well-tended hedges could help save lives the Garda said.