Councillors offering to pay for speed bumps on public roads out of their discretionary funding would open up the floodgates to requests from residents plagued by speeding.

That was the claim this week during a debate over traffic calming measures on one busy street in the heart of Loughrea.

A meeting between 20 residents of Abbey Street and Galway County Council Senior Engineer Gerard Haugh over safety concerns took place recently organised by Councillor Declan Kelly.

Mr Haugh told this month’s Loughrea Municipal District meeting that the best solution was to put in footpaths on the street, but the majority of residents were opposed to this as it would remove parking.

One alternative was to build raised ramps, but he was not convinced of their effectiveness. He had agreed to seek a cost estimate for the measure and Cllr Kelly would allocate some of his Notice of Motion money towards it.

Councillor Ivan Canning (FF) said he had understood that speed ramps were not favoured by the Council and asked if there had been a change of policy.

Cllr Michael ‘Moegie’ Maher said safety on Abbey Street had been raised for over two decades during his tenure as a public representative and he had always been told that speed ramps were not the solution.

He remarked that other traffic surveys had found that motorists were clocking 86kph on the 50kph Lake Road and the Gardaí should be out checking for speed.

“If we put in ramps with Notice of Motion we’ll be inundated with requests for them across the town…maybe we need to put the whole town to 30kph,” he stated.

Mr Kelly said residents were in favour of raised road ramps to deter speeding motorists from knocking them down directly outside their doors.

He recalled that Cllr Maher had spoken out in favour of ramps at last month’s meeting and accused Cllr Maher of repeatedly “speaking out of both sides of your mouth”.

Cllr Canning said the Council and individual councillors were funding multiple traffic surveys to confirm what they already knew yet nothing was done by the Gardaí to increase speed checks.

“I was also told [ramps] were a no-no. Ramps at the swimming area in Portumna should be a top priority. I’d be very interested in supporting something like that on Bridge Road. We give feedback to the guards and nine times out of ten nothing changes – they’re as underfunded and understaffed as we are,” he fumed.

“We’re pulling in the information, it’s telling us what we know, we pass it on to someone so we do all the work but we don’t have the manpower to put in safety measures.”

Mr Haugh said it was unfair to say nothing happened after surveys were carried out. Often there was extra enforcement directed at speeding blackspots once Gardaí had the information and it allowed the Council to seek funding from the government for traffic calming projects. Three road safety interventions had recently been funded by national bodies.

He told councillors there had been no change in policy about raised road speed bumps but each location was assessed in relation to the most effective measures that would deter speeding motorists.

Pictured: Traffic calming…Cllr Declan Kelly with residents and business owners on Abbey Street, Loughrea.