HALT!
Gardaí are called in to help solve the mystery of the theft of 50 Stop signs from rural roads
COUNCILS officials have expressed their consternation, road safety campaigners have told of their alarm... and gardaí have been called in to investigate.
The problem is the repeated theft of junction Stop signs in Co. Laois – and the identity and aim of the thieves remains a mystery.
Local authority staff have now gone public about the crooks, whose thefts from lonely country roads have left the officials puzzled over the last three years.
In that time, about 50 signs have been taken.
It’s a serious worry, because the lives of motorists and pedestrians are being put at risk without them.
There is also the considerable expense of replacing all the stolen signs.
This means the council has been running up a large bill for replacement signs. In the Portarlington area alone, eight signs have gone missing over the past six weeks.
But it is in the western area of the county, that the sign bandits are at their worst.
This is the area that includes Mountrath, through Borris-inOssory down to Graigecullen on the Carlow border.
And now the council has declared enough is enough and reported the matter to the gardaí.
A council spokesman said: ‘This started three years ago and there is no apparent reason for it.
‘Oddly enough, it is just the top part of the signs, which says Stop, that is being taken – the heavy poles they are on are always left where they are.’
He added: ‘In the area between Portarlington and Stradbally there has been a spate of incidents in the last six weeks, and as it costs anywhere between €47 and €95, excluding VAT and labour costs, to replace them it’s starting to become expensive for us.
‘Gardaí have been notified, but in reality there’s not much they can do,’ they said.
‘There are hundreds of the signs in that area alone, there’s one at every junction, for instance, and a lot of them are in rural areas so it would be impossible to monitor them all.’
Senior engineer John Ormond said: ‘The whole phenomenon began nearly three years ago and close to 40 signs have gone missing, it’s getting a bit ridiculous now.
‘We don’t know where they are going. The metal poles are still there but the Stop signs are gone.’
One local councillor, Aidan Mullins, joked in the Laois Nationalist newspaper: ‘Maybe Offaly County Council is robbing them to save money.’
A spokesman for the Road Safety Authority pleaded with those involved in the thefts to desist.
‘The most important sign on the road is a Stop sign. There could be a major accident as a result of these thefts,’ he said.
‘Whoever is at this probably thinks it’s a great big laugh, but in actual fact it is anything but, and could very easily lead to a major tragedy.’
‘There could be a major accident as a result’