Only one landowner in Co Kerry has been prosecuted for not cutting hedges in the 13 years since the legislation was introduced, it has emerged.
This is despite regular complaints at council meetings and by the public over roads and drains blocked and damaged by overgrown hedges. Under the grant-aided Rural Environmental Protection Scheme participants are obliged to cut their hedges, a meeting heard yesterday.
A large number of the 451 complaints investigated by the council's roads section last year related to damage by hedges.
A special council roads meeting in Killarney heard that landowners, responsible for the maintenance of roadside hedges since the 1993 Roads Act, were issued with letters reminding them of their obligations and the first of the thousands of letters had been sent out last week.
Hedge owners are being given three weeks to comply and then "legal proceedings" would be initiated, roads engineers warned.
Last year, over 5,000 hedge-cutting notices warning landowners about their boundaries along roadsides were issued and over 70 prosecutions were "pending", according to council reports published earlier this year.