COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, October 23rd, 2017

QUESTION NO.18

QUESTION: Councillor F. Timmons

To ask the Chief Executive for a detailed report into Grass cutting - who carries this out and what is the cost to South Dublin County Council.  Also who checks the quality of Grass Cutting?

REPLY:

South Dublin County Council maintains 1700 Hectares of parkland and open spaces, which also includes 163 playing pitches.

The following points summarise the main features of the Council's grass cutting operation:

• The grass cutting season runs for 8 to 9 months of the year, commencing in March and ending in November.
• Grass cutting is operated from each of the Council's seven public realm depots (Corkagh, Grange, Waterstown, Saggart, Sean Walsh Park, Tymon and Rathfarnham Castle) with each depot responsible for its own geographical area and staff resources are assigned accordingly.
• All grass cutting is carried out by Council own staff at present.  A total of 60 staff are currently engaged in grass cutting with 25 of those operating tractor mowers and 35 operating ride on mowers.
• During the off-season these staff are engaged in bonfire clean up, Christmas tree shredding and tree pruning works.
• The target frequencies for grass cutting are fortnightly for grass in parks, open spaces and roadside margins while playing pitches are scheduled to be cut weekly.
• A number of additional tasks are carried out in conjunction with the grass cutting, such as weed control in roadside margins and strimming of long grass and weeds in boundary areas, and additional staff are assigned to this work as required.
• A number of grass cutting tasks are carried out at weekends due to health and safety requirements, and these for the most part are the regular/scheduled grass cutting on dual carriageway roads.
• Some grass areas are being developed, under the advice of the Council's heritage officer, as wildflower areas where the grass is cut only twice in the year.  This is to encourage biodiversity and the management of grasslands in this manner forms an element of the Council's climate change action plan.  These areas in general are in the County's main parks such as Tymon and Waterstown.
• The budget provided for grass cutting in 2017 is €3,988m and this breaks down as follows - €2.6m wages and salaries;  €1.212m plant and machinery and €176,600 relates to other costs such as energy, fuel, materials etc.  This forms 16.7% of the overall public realm budget for 2017 of €23.8m.
• A total of 16 seasonal staff were engaged in 2017 to provide cover for regular staff on annual leave in order to maintain the standard of grass cutting throughout the summer months.

The grass cutting operation is supervised and monitored by the public realm management and supervisory staff including parks superintendents, district supervisors, foremen of works, assistant foremen and charge hands. A review of public realm operations, including grass cutting, is nearing completion and will result in changes being made to the nature of the operation as set out above in order to achieve greater efficiencies and higher standards.