Michael McCarthy (Cork South West, Labour)
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The Minister is welcome. I wish to make a couple of points that may or may not taper off into a question. On the question of the roads allocation, I welcome that there has been an increase in the spend for the first time since the crash. As for the way in which it is broken down, naturally there will be a concentration on national primary routes and similarly, there will be a concentration on regional roads thereafter. For example, an area such as west Cork has a national primary route running through it and all available funding obviously will be expended on keeping it to a standard, keeping it salted in the wintertime and so on. However, there is another structure of road not immediately visible to the eye as one traverses those routes, namely, the local tertiary roads. There is a real issue with these roads and the bridges along them that have been damaged in storms or associated inclement weather conditions that always will have a severe adverse effect on such roads and elements such as bridges along them. Invariably, there will be lobbying to bring such roads back to a level they were at before the storm, the severe frost or whatever and there is an issue in respect of expenditure with the local area engineer's office. What happens is that when an Estimate is announced, it goes back to the local authorities and in their wisdom, with their engineers and special works overseers, they decide on where the money is spent. However, there will be significant swathes of areas that will not see much of that, albeit not in geographic terms. Outside of the normal expenditure and the special allocation, this area almost would require funding in its own right to restore it to the level at which it was before the inclement weather got at it.

I ask that as the announcements filter out into the offices of area engineers, this point should be borne in mind. The area engineers will be given a budget and naturally will concentrate that towards the regional routes and the national primary routes in most cases, almost without exception, much to the detriment of local tertiary roads. A lot of damage is done to cars on those roads, which are used by milk lorries, agricultural vehicles and so on and are liable to extracurricular damage, as such. I will ask the Minister a question on the allocation to which he may be able to respond this afternoon. How much flexibility will be used by local authority members in how that allocation is spent? Will that be maintained as an executive function or will it filter down through the executive or-----