Strand seating benches in Athlone gone again after being 'tampered with'

Six new riverside seating benches in Athlone, which were installed just a fortnight ago, have now been removed by the council after they were reportedly "tampered with".

Public seating benches have traditionally been popular feature of The Strand, but they were absent for several years due to work that was being carried out in the area on the Athlone Main Drainage Scheme.

The installation of six new benches, which had been purchased by the council with the support of a €10,000 contribution from the Office of Public Works (OPW), was completed on Thursday, June 4, however all six have now been taken away again.

When contacted by the Westmeath Independent today (Thursday), a council official said it was decided to removed them because the "fixings" of some of the benches had been interfered with "for reasons unknown".

The council said its intention is for the seating to be put back in again using a "new means of installation" but there's no indication at this stage of when that might happen.

"The fixings of some of the benches were tampered with, for reasons unknown," said council official Bernard Sorohan.

"We decided to remove them in the short term until we gather the resources to construct a more elaborate means of installation to make them more difficult to be tampered with."

The council previously indicated that, in addition to the six seating benches at The Strand, it was planning to install two more in the Wolfe Tone Terrace area, along with two public bins in the vicinity of the new seating.