A Cavan based farmer says there will be a significant impact on roads if action is not taken on trees affected by ash dieback.
Ash dieback is a fungal disease that arrived in Ireland from continental imports, and is expected to cause the death of the majority of Ash trees over the next 20 years. Fallen trees near power lines caused long delays to the restoration of power in many areas in the aftermath of storm Darragh. Richard Moeran is an organic beef, sheep, tillage farmer, and forester in Mountnugent, Co Cavan.
Speaking on the Joe Finnegan show this morning, Richard says thousands of trees are in a dangerous condition near roads, and action must be taken urgently.
"The most dangerous trees are the ones along the roads and we've got a road network in this country that totals 60,000 miles and I challenge anybody to go more than 10 miles on any road, particularly and N or an L road, you'll encounter an ash tree very shortly on that journey. A lot of them can be felled back away from the road so they're easy to remove. The trees that present the problem, and people will have driven underneath them and when you start to think about them, you look up, you realise how many of them are actually leaning over the road with heavy branches. We're talking 10-20 tonnes of timber".
