Taxpayer foots €126,000 bill as tyre trial falls flat

Around 3,500 tonnes of used tyres, acquired by state agencies for research and stored in local authority warehouses in Galway, were shipped to Asia for disposal – at a cost of more than €126,000 to the taxpayer.

Hundreds of thousands of the end-of-life tyres were acquired to be used in an experiment to determine if the light rubber material would be effective as ‘fill’ on the country’s roads, in particular roads over peat.

However, when funding for the research project, which was conceived during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years, dried up, the project ceased and Galway County Council was left with the surplus tyres – and the disposal bill.

Documents released to the Connacht Tribune under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that some 1,431 tonnes of tyres were removed and disposed of at New Inn, Ballinasloe. A further 2,000 tonnes of tyres have been removed from a site in Tonabrucky in the city but have yet to be disposed of.

Galway County Council has confirmed that the amount paid for removing the 3,431 tonnes of tyres was €33.93 per tonne plus VAT, working out at cost of just over €126,000 for disposal.

It is estimated that there is between 80 and 100 tyres per tonne, which would suggest about 300,000 tyres in total was in the consignments.

In addition to the disposal costs, the Council paid €686.34 on security costs, to ‘guard’ the consignments, which were a potential fire hazard. 

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.