Mr. Michael Nolan:

We have a 5,300 km network, and 1,300 km of that is motorway or dual carriageway. Of the balance, 4,000 km is national primary and secondary. Most of those are legacy non-engineered routes which are very susceptible to storm damage, and if there is any flooding they freeze. This happened in 2009 and 2010. They are very susceptible. They have poor visibility and cross-section and we have at least 2,000 km of that type of road on our books. We need a lot of investment. That is why I can say we have 150 schemes on our books, 50 active in planning and design and 100 on the subs bench waiting to go forward.

There is no shortage of national secondary routes to go through this minor works programme if we had the funding. Under the road safety strategy, the target for 2020 is to open 150 of these but we will hit approximately one third of that. We will do what we can. We will have schemes shovel-ready and that is as much as we can do.