Issues remain for Waterford City and County Council when it comes to road maintenance. Director of Services for Roads with the council Fergus Galvin says they are dealing with a major backlog of jobs that need to be completed.
Issues such as road markings were raised on WLR this week by councillors and listeners who say something needs to be done. In response, Mr. Galvin spoke to WLR and says funding and workforce issues remain.
"We got a limited capacity to do very small-scale stuff in our own teams, but then you are looking to buy specialist machinery. We just don't have the number of staff to do the work.
"If you look at the roads crew in the city, it's made up of 12 or 13 men who are the same people out there fixing potholes, cleaning out drains, carrying out footpath repairs, and everything else in between.
"The other side that we are finding increasingly difficult is the simple availability of competent contractors to undertake that kind of work. It is one of the issues we have at the moment. It isn't necessarily the fault of the contractors as there are only about four contractors across the country that can do this kind of work.
"Every time I talk to them they have to reach backlogs of work but they also have difficulty with retaining and recruiting trained, competent personnel.
"Unfortunately, we are not getting that, and we are at a stage where we have contractors who are carrying out work that should have been completed three or four months ago."
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