An all-island snow and ice updated weather warning has been issued by Met Éireann until 12:00p.m tomorrow (Tuesday, January 7) as farmers in many counties continue to battle difficult weather conditions.
According to two of the country’s largest co-ops “adverse weather” in some regions is affecting some of their operations.
The Mitchelstown headquartered co-op, Dairygold, said that because it covers a large geographical area and “due to the difficult weather conditions, milk collection is currently challenging in some areas”.
“Our milk advisory/assembly team are working with individual farms to ensure the safe collection of milk,” a Dairygold spokesperson said.
Meanwhile Co. Kilkenny headquartered Tirlán indicated that while it had “no major milk collection issues to report” it was using “rigid trucks” in a small number of badly affected areas, particularly on higher ground.
Tirlán’s chair, John Murphy said that the co-op will continue to monitor the weather situation.
“The most important message is for farmers to ensure the safety of themselves and all working on farms.
“Farmyards are busy workplaces at this time of the year and these adverse weather conditions can make conditions very challenging.
“We are particularly grateful to our milk and feed transport team for working hard to ensure that milk collection and feed deliveries are maintained,” Murphy added.
Weather
According to the National Emergency Co-ordination Group (NECG) who met again today (Monday, December 6) the ongoing wintry weather conditions and low temperatures will mean snow may be very slow to clear, and will continue to cause “hazardous travelling conditions and potential travel disruption”.
Keith Leonard, national director of the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management, has continued to highlight public safety advice.
“It’s important to emphasise again that even where roads have been salted, people should slow down, drive with caution and allow extra time for their journey.
“As well as looking after yourself, we are also asking you to look out for others,” he added.
Meanwhile An Post also said its services in certain parts of the country today had been impacted by the very cold weather.
It said that it was not possible to make letter or parcel deliveries on the majority of postal routes in counties Cork, Kerry, Kilkenny, Limerick, Tipperary and some parts of Wicklow and that many post offices in these counties are also impacted, with 35 closed.
“An Post will proceed on a safety first basis and resume delivery and post office services as soon as safety and local access allow,” it stated.
But according to ESB Networks it has been “making progress” today on restoring power to thousands of customers who had been by snow and ice-related outages on Sunday.
This evening there were an estimated 17,000 homes, farms and businesses without power with most impacted counties including Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary,
Marts
Meanwhile in light of the ongoing weather warnings a number of marts have moved to cancel more sales this week.
These include Mid Kerry Co-Op Mart which has cancelled its sheep sale tomorrow “due to treacherous weather conditions” and Kilkenny Co-op livestock mart is also closed again tomorrow.
Other marts which have cancelled sales include Castleisland Co-op livestock mart, which will be closed all of this week, while Kanturk Mart in Co. Cork has also cancelled tomorrow’s sale.