Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 8 March 2018

Public Accounts Committee

2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 8: Central Government Funding of Local Authorities
Local Government Fund Financial Statement 2016
Special Report No. 97 of the Comptroller and Auditor General on the Administration and Collection of Motor Taxes

9:00 am

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When I spoke to the three CEOs of local authorities they all said that the collapse in roads funding is very serious for the State and for the local authorities. Roads must be maintained, as everyone knows, on a regular basis. If they are not maintained and if we do not wash their faces, so to speak, they can deteriorate. It can take up to five years but normally after three or four years we will have a problem if we do not maintain them. We have a problem now. If one drives in many rural areas, one will see the damage that has been done. Roads are subsiding, potholes are not being repaired and so on. The fact that we are not properly funding roads is a difficulty. In that context, I ask why there was a collapse in funding for roads and why the funding has not been sufficiently increased to meet demand. Has the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government or any other Department done a cost analysis of not repairing the roads on an ongoing basis? What will it cost us if we allow the roads to get into such a state that after five years the work required to repair them is significant? Has anybody done that work, in terms of showing that not repairing them will cost us more in the long run? I will ask my former school colleague, Mr. Graham Doyle, to answer that.

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