Driving home this weather

Posted on January 07, 2010 at 12:00 AM

It took me just under 6 hours to drive home from Leinster House this evening. I left at 4.30 and drove in my driveway at 9.50pm. It’s not the first time this has ever happened to me but I think that is the longest time driving home. You start out not minding too much, listening to the radio, singing along to upbeat songs. Then after about 2 hours and still in town you look at the other drivers around you and feel your common humanity and we are all in the same boat.  People are ringing in radio stations to say where they are stuck and request a song and you smile at their predicament and the radio banter about it.  But then when 4 hours have gone and you’re only just getting out of town the hunger sets in and the boredom and frustration.  Many people had started a long walk home and but for the terrible cold that could have seemed a better option than driving to Lucan.  My sister texted me at 8.55 to say she had just arrived at her home having left work at 3.  I spent some stationary time in mobile phone correspondence with a voter about the state of the country and the politics that has got us here.

I went through Ballyfermot hoping to stop and get some food to eat in the car but the roads were awful and I was afraid to turn off somewhere in case I might cause an accident getting back into lane. I am not the most confident of drivers in this weather.  The roads were getting worse and with no road markings to be seen, and the dark, you get a bit disorientated. 

I don’t have a quick fix on this issue but the Councils and the Gardaí and the other agencies need to be quicker to do something when the snow starts.  Much of the road didn’t seem to be gritted, although it had started to snow before lunchtime.  Government cutbacks can’t be helping.  Many local authorities have less staff, less overtime, and less money.  Why can’t there be more coordination of the efforts of various Government agencies to address the problems we face when there is a big freeze?  What is the Cabinet doing about the lack of gritting? How are the homeless faring in this weather and what extra provision is being made to help them?  What about those too poor to heat their homes and who can’t afford a decent warm coat? Some of those people have less money than this time last year.  If we want to be better able to cope with the weather, whether it is cooling or warming, we need good and well resourced public services by a Government that plans ahead and reacts in time when there is snow, flooding or droughts.

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