A volunteer group has taken upon itself to salt footpaths in the city in the current cold snap in a bid to thwart slips and falls — because Galway City Council only treats the roads.

Safe Streets Galway has come up with a list of 30 streets which it believes needs to be included in the winter maintenance plan to minimise falls for pedestrians.

They are calling on Galway City Council to spend 30% of the total gritting budget on footpaths, which is currently at zero.

They purchased 125kg of salt which volunteers were spreading this week at the worst hotspots as identified by themselves and members of the public through social media.

“We were able to salt seven of the highest priority steep footpaths near schools. We’ll send this list into City Council Roads Department to ask them to add all these spots to a new footpath gritting list and they might be safer next time out,” said spokesperson Eoin Ryan.

Spanish doctor Teresa Botin Lopez, who works at UHG, spoke out about sustaining serious injuries in a fall last November during a previous frosty spell. Beside her in the emergency department was an elderly man who was badly hurt after falling on a slippy footpath. A bus driver who had stopped to help him had also fallen and broken his hip.

“One of my nursing colleagues helped the bus driver and the ambulance took him to hospital while the whole bus waited for a new driver. It was such a mess that day in Emergency Department with so many injured people, all from the icy footpaths,” she said.

At Monday’s Galway City Council West Area meeting, founder of the first cycle bus in the country, Cllr Alan Curran (Soc Dems), asked for salt bins to be provided in neighbourhoods so that residents could salt their own estates.

“I was told that most councils don’t grit footpaths but that’s not true. They do it in Dublin and Cork. All I’ve had to today are reports that it’s extremely lethal on footpaths.”

Senior engineer Fiona Holland told councillors that a winter maintenance plan had been agreed which was similar to many local authorities. While some local authorities did provide grit on an ad hoc basis, others like Cork City provided salt bins when applied for by residents’ groups.