Mr. Liam Gavin:

I am the director of services in roads. Galway has the biggest network of roads in the country - there are about 5,500 km of non-national roads in the county. It is a major network. Roads funding has dropped to 1996 levels, from about €35 million or €40 million per year to under €20 million per year in the past number of years. There has been a significant fall in the input into non-national road maintenance. That fall has continued.

Galway is now in a 20 or 25-year cycle in terms of maintaining roads. The cycle should be seven to ten years, but that has now dropped way back.

As one can imagine, by that stage the road is in very poor condition. Roads funding in Galway has been seriously impacted over the past ten or 15 years and is not increasing. We would need an increase of €2 million or €3 million per annum every year over the next ten years to start bringing us back up to levels that are sustainable in terms of maintaining the road network.