Mr. Michael Nolan:

I thank the Chairman and the committee for the invitation to attend. I am accompanied by Mr. Peter Walsh, director, capital programme, and Mr. Pat Maher, director, network operations. While the invitation relates to the overall funding of local authorities, I will limit my statement to the allocations for the maintenance and improvement of national roads. The briefing papers set out the significant roles our partner local authorities perform in supporting these activities.

On national roads improvements and maintenance funding provided for local authorities in 2016, Transport Infrastructure Ireland,TII, received €411 million in State funding to maintain, manage and improve the national road network in 2016. This funding also provided for PPP committed payments amounting to €119 million. The final spend by local authorities on maintenance and improvements was approximately €200 million. The balance was principally allocated to centrally procured operations, asset renewals and maintenance activities. A breakdown of the 2016 spend by category for TII and the local authorities is provided in the briefing material. The trend in capital funding provision for national road improvements was downwards in the years 2010 to 2016, inclusive, as indicated in Chapter 8 of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report on the central government funding of local authorities. This reflects the successful conclusion of the major inter-urban motorway construction programme in December 2010. The focus of TII post-2010 has been on maintaining the network and renewing assets to the extent possible but at the expense of maintaining a pipeline of new major road projects. The expenditure on national road pavements and minor realignments, safety and bridge works remained relatively unchanged through the years 2010 to 2016, inclusive. A graph depicting trends in local authority expenditure, by activity, has been provided in the briefing material.

State funding available to TII in 2018 to maintain, manage and improve the national road network is €466 million. The most notable element of TII's 2018 grant allocations to local authorities is the increase in funding made available for pavement asset renewals which is over €60 million greater than last year's allocation. Maintenance funding is, however, down by 15% on 2017 levels which will pose particular difficulties for TII's management of what is now a more extensive and high speed network. We also manage a more resilient and strategic winter maintenance system. This system is expensive to operate. Investment in such resilience has proved to be highly justified and warranted. I thank the Department for supporting TII's investment in a network of salt barns and maintenance compounds strategically located around the network. This investment was made following the experience of the winters of 2009 and 2010. We will continue to work with the Department as we review road network requirements and strategies following the recent severe weather events. Salt stocks are adequate as we approach the end of the 2017-18 winter season. Other activities associated with the running of the national road network include incident response, traffic messaging and control activities.

The recently published national development plan recognises the importance of ensuring the quality and value of past investments are maintained to a high level to ensure quality levels of service, accessibility and connectivity. Prioritisation of this type of investment is a recommendation of the recent public investment management assessment conducted by the International Monetary Fund. The Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport strategic investment framework for land transport analysis has established the investment level required to maintain, manage and renew the existing transport infrastructure to keep it in an adequate condition. This is known as steady State investment. The steady State investment requirement for the existing network is expected to be substantially achieved by 2021. TII welcomes the commitment to increase maintenance and asset renewal expenditure over the lifetime of the national development plan to meet the required investment levels for the current transport network and as new projects are developed. The IMF report acknowledges that Ireland operates a highly developed system for determining and monitoring pavement quality on the road network and estimating the amounts of maintenance and rehabilitation funding required to maintain steady State road quality and availability.

I appreciate the Chairman's remarks about the remarkable performance of public service agencies in the past week. On behalf of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, I thank all local authority staff and motorway operation crews for maintaining service on national roads during the recent severe weather event. While my opening statement has addressed the matters raised by the committee as they relate to national roads, we will be happy to answer questions on any particular issue raised or any other matter of interest. Should we not have the information requested to hand, we will follow up with a written response.