Mr. Fred Barry:

Decisions have not yet been made on that issue. The work to date has been funded out of Exchequer money.

Deputy Ann Phelan asked about contact with local councils and their autonomy in terms of being able to respond. The autonomy of local authorities in matters relating to national roads is fairly limited. In the case of improvement projects on national roads the relevant local authority will often sponsor the projects by bringing them forward. However, to advance such projects they must secure funding from the National Roads Authority, which we, in turn, receive from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. Generally, projects are developed jointly between the NRA and local authorities and most are developed through the regional offices. These offices are staffed by local authority personnel, although payment for staff and so forth is made by the NRA. As I stated, the projects are jointly developed.

Local authorities have autonomy on the minor spending involved on pure maintenance. The levels of payment to the local authorities for maintenance is less than they believe to be necessary and I have some sympathy with the local authorities in that regard. While they have some discretion in this regard, they are also stretched to find enough money to cover their needs.

On the handover of roads and increasing the length of regional roads local authorities must manage on foot of the completion of new roads, the legal mechanism obtaining in this respect is fairly black and white. When a new national road that bypasses an old road is opened the latter will, by law, automatically revert to being a regional road. This is not a matter for discussion but the practice has been that at the time of handover the NRA will agree with the relevant local authority either a body of works or the allocation of a sum of money to the local authority in question to ensure the road being handed over is in good condition or the local authority has the wherewithal to bring it into good condition. Beyond that, the responsibility for the funding and management of the regional road reverts to the local authority and the NRA no longer has any responsibility in that regard, except to the extent that we do administrative work for the Department.

As to the winter, we have our fingers crossed in the hope that we will have a better winter than we had a few years ago. We have taken a number of measures since the winters of two and three years ago. During the most recent winter weather crisis, the National Roads Authority was asked to take over the purchase of salt from the local authorities. We do this centrally and have a stockpile of 150,000 tonnes of salt available for the national roads. We also, as part of a subsequent initiative, supported the Department in creating a stockpile for non-national roads. While this stockpile of 60,000 tonnes is not under our management, it was procured by the National Roads Authority and we made it available.