Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputies for raising this important matter. The Minister for Transport would like to express his sympathy to all who have been badly affected by the recent severe weather. Indeed, some parts of the country have been hit more than once by the impact of the earlier flooding and the recent severe cold weather. He also expresses his appreciation of the work done by the local authorities and the NRA and commends local authority frontline staff in particular on the exceptional work they did to deal with the impact of the recent extended period of severe weather.

As well as the impact on the daily lives of citizens, there has been a serious impact on parts of the road network, as has become evident in recent days. Damage to road surfaces is an inevitable consequence of the type of weather we have had in recent times. Ireland has a uniquely extensive road network, with more than 96,000 km of road, or 2.5 times the EU average. The maintenance and improvement of this network places a substantial financial burden on local authorities and the Exchequer.

Considerable resources have been spent in recent years on both the national and regional and local road networks. The first priority therefore has to be to safeguard this investment in so far as this is possible, taking account of the recent weather impacts and the current difficulties with the public finances. The response to recent events will have to carefully target the available resources to address the most urgently required repairs, taking account of key factors such as safety, the strategic importance of the individual road and traffic levels.

The improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads is the statutory responsibility of each local authority, in accordance with the provisions of section 13 of the Roads Act 1993. Works on those roads are funded from local authorities' own resources and supplemented by State road grants which are paid by the Department of Transport. The initial selection and prioritisation of works to be funded is also a matter for each local authority. When road grants for regional and local roads are allocated each year, the Department of Transport does not hold back a reserve allocation at central level to deal with weather contingencies because such an arrangement would mean a reduction across all local authorities in the road grant allocations to them at the beginning of each year. Rather, the allocation made to local authorities is inclusive of the weather risk factor. Local authorities are expressly advised that they should set aside contingency sums from their overall regional and local roads resources to finance necessary weather related works. Applications for additional funding to carry out remedial works to roads and bridges following bad weather and flooding can only be considered in exceptional circumstances.

Earlier this year the Department of Transport asked those local authorities particularly affected by flooding to provide an assessment of the additional road costs incurred. Last week, the Department requested all local authorities to provide information on the likely additional costs of the recent severe weather over and above their normal winter maintenance expenditure and to identify the principal components of the additional costs. While the Department has received some information on the impact of the November flooding, the collection of information on the recent cold weather is still ongoing. It will take some time to establish costs as the damage is still becoming evident and is being quantified on a daily basis. However, the Minister has asked all local authorities to provide information as soon as possible to enable him to assess the full impact of the severe weather when deciding on the 2010 regional and local road grant allocations. In allocating those grants the Minister will prioritise expenditure to deal with damage caused by the recent exceptional weather.

It is particularly important that local authorities carefully reassess their planned road programmes for 2010 in light of the impact of the recent bad weather on their road networks. The Minister asks them to prioritise necessary repairs to damage caused to roads by weather. The first priority has to be the protection of the existing road network and particularly the massive Exchequer investment of €5.6 billion since 1997.

The National Roads Authority generally fully reimburses local authorities for their expenditure on winter maintenance on national primary and national secondary roads. The Minister is aware this expenditure has also increased substantially due to the bad weather. The NRA will also be reviewing its expenditure priorities for 2010 in the light of the damage caused to national roads.

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