Mr. Fred Barry:

I thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it today to discuss the National Roads Authority's current funding and work programme. The authority's work programme has three main elements, which are network management, commercial activities, and network improvements.

Network management includes tunnels, motorways, traffic centres, weather station operations and the like and rehabilitation and renewals work, particularly of pavement, signage, structures and lineage and maintenance. Network management, particularly as it relates to operations, has grown considerably in recent years.

Our commercial programme mainly relates to tolling and to public private partnerships, PPPs. Our tolling business employs hundreds of staff, mainly outsourced, and has almost 1 million account holders. The most recent developments include compliance with the European electronic toll service directive, which provides for pan-European tag interoperability, the full implications of which are still not entirely clear. Network improvement activity is very dependent on the funding available to us.

We discussed the improvements programme when we were before the committee last November so I will not repeat all of the detail. However, the main funding stream, which covers network renewals such as pavement and bridge rehabilitation as well as improvement projects, has been reduced by about 83% from peak and in fact was halved from 2012 to 2013 alone. One impact of this is that the funding available for rehabilitation work this year is less than is required to maintain the network in a steady-state condition. Should the underfunding persist, the cost ultimately will exceed what it would have done to carry out the work in a timely manner.

A positive development since our last appearance is that we are proceeding with new PPP schemes with the Government having committed to fund the State's costs. The Newlands Cross upgrade, the dualing of a section of the N11 between Arklow and Rathnew and the construction of an online service area near Gorey have started detail design and construction. The procurement of the very large Gort to Tuam scheme is well advanced and the procurement of the New Ross bypass and Gorey to Enniscorthy upgrade, which includes the Enniscorthy bypass, is under way. Unfortunately, the funding being made available to the authority for the coming years is such that there is no scope to undertake other improvement works on the national roads network.

The authority has always had a significant role in improving road safety and the network improvements in recent years have been enormously successful in reducing deaths and fatalities on the national road network. In addition to our traditional statutory responsibilities under the Roads Act, there are two EU directives on road safety for which we have been designated primary responsibility – the tunnels directive and the roads infrastructure safety management directive. The tunnels directive has been with us for some years, and has been fully implemented for some time. I am pleased to advise that in this year's programme, we are making excellent progress in implementing the relatively new infrastructure safety management directive.

We have, as requested, kept these opening remarks brief but will be happy to answer questions as best we can on any particular schemes or indeed on any other matters of interest to the committee. Should we not have the information requested to hand, we will follow up with written responses.