Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

I will provide a table setting out the returns received from county and city councils. It covers the estimated cost of the response to the recent flooding and severely cold weather, and of road repairs arising from those weather events. The total estimate is almost €198 million. This information is being assessed by my Department at present.

When deciding on the allocation of over €412 million in Exchequer regional and local road grants for 2010, my priority was to protect the existing investment in the roads network and to target carefully resources to address, on a priority basis, the most urgently required repairs resulting from the extensive damage caused by the recent severe weather. With that in mind, I simplified the grants structure and gave more flexibility to local authorities to direct funding to these priorities.

These grants, which supplement expenditure by local authorities from their own resources, represent a very significant investment at a time when public finances are under severe pressure. They bring the total Exchequer investment in regional and local roads since 1997 to over €6 billion.

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