Scrapped tyre project costs council €126k

Around 3,500 tonnes of used tyres that were acquired by state agencies for a research project that went flat have been 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 and bogs.

However, when funding for the research project, which was conceived during the Celtic Tiger years, dried up, Galway County Council was left with the spare tyres — and the disposal bill.