Roads Winter Maintenance Update December 16, 2022

Fingal County Council have gritted over 600 km of roads overnight during the current cold weather. This represents half of our total road network.  Approximately 4,600 Tonnes of road salt is available for Winter 2022/2023 and this is stored at our two facilities at Coolmine (Dublin 15) and Watery Lane (Swords).

During times of heavy frost and snow the Fingal team are in regular contact with Met Eireann and the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Services overnight. 

Winter Gritting Routes

Fingal’s Winter Maintenance Plan provides for a number of critical routes which are essential to be kept serviceable in all weather conditions as far as reasonably practicable and are therefore treated during all weather events.  It is not possible to grit all public thoroughfares and Priority 1 and 2 Gritting Routes are in place. 

Priority 1 – Priority Routes

There are other routes which are desirable to be kept serviceable in the normal winter weather conditions, as far as reasonably practicable.  These routes include regional and local routes that are the principal traffic, bus and commuter routes serving the principal residential, commercial and industrial areas of Fingal County Council.

Priority 2 – Normal Routes

It is not possible to grit all public thoroughfares, footpaths and housing estates.  Resources are assigned to the Priority 1 and Priority 2 routes which represents approx. 46% of the total public road network in the county.

Winter Gritting Times

Follow our Social Media Channels for updates on when we are Salting. 

For further information see Winter Maintenance 

Every year our team of drivers have a salting roster from October to April. There can be up to 50 drivers on this roster, Including JCB drivers who load the salt onto the trucks. Inspectors also have to check the routes, to make sure all areas are covered. They have two start times 7pm and 4am. There are 100’s of kilometres covered on these salting routes each time they go out. They can spread up to 4000 tons of salt each year. These drivers carry out a tough job with unsociable hours to make the roads safer when you are travelling, and we want to recognise them for all their hard work.

We also have a large team of drivers for road sweepers, compact sweepers, micro road sweepers and shift crews covering street bins and litter picking. They can be on the road from 6am to 9pm. Our drivers receive specialised training to deal with driving in adverse weather conditions. This featured training is just one of the ways we try to ensure they are equipped to deal with these conditions. Weather forecast data and graphs are evaluated by the Area Engineer, who then contact the Supervisors to arrange the salting run.

For advice see or dedicated page  Winter Ready or visit www.winterready.ie