Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. I have great sympathy for the managers with regard to health and safety legislation because the buck stops with them. They could be before a judge on a criminal matter before they knew where they were. It is a very pressured and difficult environment in which to work. It would have been helpful if Engineers Ireland or an engineer had come before the committee to discuss this matter because roads are not the only function of the managers. They run local authorities and roads are a part of it.

The lack of national infrastructure in the north west was mentioned. I live in the south west and I must travel ten miles before I access a national road and then the motorway. We do not have a rail system or an airport. Cork Airport and Kerry Airport are 70 miles and 80 miles away, respectively. I am familiar with many of the regional, local and tertiary roads in Cork. Ideally, roads are not laid down, they are built. The best roads I travel on have foundations and were built from scratch and maintenance is less of an issue. For decades, money and funds in the country was tight and then we had the Celtic tiger. What is the opinion of the witnesses on how we dealt with building roads rather than continually laying surface on roads with no foundations? If the clock could be turned back, would they do it differently?

What is the relationship of the management in the organisation and various local authorities with Engineers Ireland and the director of services or county engineer? My impression is that engineers come with a very large bill which must be shoehorned into the funding available. At any stage did Engineers Ireland or the engineering sector put forward the idea of continually putting two layers of tar and chip on top of roads which do not have adequate foundations is the way to go? Is it necessary because of a funding issue? What if somebody had taken a decision 30 years ago to rebuild the roads infrastructure as opposed to resurfacing it every summer? From travelling around I know one can be thrown left, right and centre in a car. Truck and van drivers have complained ad nauseam that certain roads have deteriorated not because they have not been dealt with by engineers or local authorities, but because they have no foundations. This is a fundamental issue with regard to local and regional roads. Has any assessment been done? If the witnesses agree this is a problem, do we have a way to measure its scale? Do we have a figure on how much it would cost to put it right?

I welcome the progress made and I apologise for missing the beginning of the presentation. I welcome the initiative taken and the technology used to identify and recognise where roads are satisfactory or in need of attention. Various engineers would have had this information in their offices, but for decision making it is now in one place and I look forward to standardisation. I presume the purpose of the exercise is to have standardisation throughout the country, whereby the idiosyncrasies of what individual engineers believe is required are removed and a standard and uniform approach is taken to road reconstruction and maintenance.

Do the witnesses have a view on the investment in our motorways which has taken place in the past two decades? It has been significant and has sucked up a very large amount of resources. It is welcome and we have a fantastic motorway system, albeit all leading to Dublin. Do the witnesses agree it has sucked investment from rural areas? Will it lead to a problem with road fatigue? Have we factored in how the motorways will be overlaid, whether in five or 15 years time? Have we factored in significant extra investment to maintain standards and safety in our motorway system?