Winter Ready - Maintenance & Gritting

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is responsible for 16km of National Primary and Secondary Roads, 106km of Regional Roads and 561km of Local Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Roads. Motorway (M1 and M50) gritting is being carried out motorway contractors on behalf of Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII).

Winter maintenance is confined to National Primary (NP) and National Secondary (NS) Routes, Regional routes and 151km of Local roads.  

The aim of the Winter Service Plan 2023-2024 is to set out how dlr will deal with ice and snow conditions on roads within the County. The purpose of the plan is to identify the processes, procedures and key personnel employed by dlr to deliver the winter service for the County.  In general, planned treatment responses involve spreading salt (sometimes referred to as grit) on the road during frost and snow ploughing during snow periods. The Council has ten trucks available for dealing with snow and ice during the winter and these vehicles carry out salting/gritting operations on pre-defined routes within the County, up to six of these trucks can be modified for use as snow ploughs. We also have a range of plant and fleet that can assist with snow clearing operations, including tractors with front-loaders, JCB-type machines and 4-wheel drive vehicles.

Winter service is not an emergency service in the traditional sense in that low temperatures, ice and snow are regular, frequent and reasonably predictable occurrences. 

The Council’s objective is to provide an effective and efficient winter maintenance service within the resources available and to minimise the impact of frost, ice or snow on the travelling public. We also have a severe weather plan and severe weather assessment team in place that deals with severe or extreme weather events, such as snow storms and prolonged periods of ice and snow on the ground.

Please see our Winter Service Plan and Interactive Gritting Map under related documents for the Plan.