‘Every day’ weight breaches spark fears for safety of old Tipperary bridge
Action is needed to protect a historic bridge in Tipperary where weight restrictions are being breached daily.
That was the call from Fianna Fáil councillor for Carrick-on-Suir Kieran Bourke, who said that vehicles that are too big are using the Old Bridge in Carrick every single day.
"The Old Bridge in Carrick-on-Suir, there’s a weight restriction on it for vehicles – I think it’s three tonnes– it’s constantly being breached,” Cllr Bourke said.
"Two days ago, I followed a delivery truck, a rigid truck, and I suppose it was carrying at least 15 tonnes, and I challenged the driver when he stopped in Carrickbeg. I was told two words by the driver, one beginning with F and the other beginning with O.
"Something needs to be done with this, we used to have a barrier, a height restricting barrier on the Tipperary side of the river at the bridge, and it worked quite well,” Cllr Bourke added.
He said the barrier was removed at some point and called on Tipperary County Council to reinstate it to control the sizes of vehicles that can use the bridge.
"I think it’s something for the sake of the bridge, people are very concerned about the large arch there, it's the newest part of the bridge, it was redone after the Civil War,” he said.
"People are very concerned about that. Strangely enough, the old structure that’s there 700 or 800 years old seems to be solid enough, but we’re the guardians of that bridge and we need to do something about it,” Cllr Bourke implored.
In response, council engineer Kieran Malone said that he would look into the reasons why the height barrier was removed, and see if it could be put back up.
"We had a similar issue in Nenagh with the one-way system, we had a weight restriction on one of the streets which we saw wasn’t being adhered to, we asked the gardaí to do a few spot checks and that seemed to solve the problem, so I’ll see if we can talk to the superintendent here and see can they get someone present there,” Mr Malone said.
“On the height restriction barrier, I’ll have to go back and check the history of that and why it was taken out, but we will look at it,” he added.