Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

On that specific point, county councils have estimated the considerable damage done to part of the road network in various parts of the country came to a total of approximately €180 million. In a year of tight public finances, the Minister allocated €240 million to local authorities, for which they will have full discretion. As the Deputy will be aware from past experience, in normal circumstances various tags are applied to the grants and funds, be they for maintenance or surface dressing, provided by the Department of Transport to local authorities based on the submissions made by the latter as part of the Estimates process. In this situation, the practical response was to forget about the allocation in that respect for this year because we had an exceptional problem. As a total of €240 million was being allocated to local authorities and the amount of money they believed they required to solve the problem was €180 million, our solution was to give them full discretion. That would mean enabling them, where a road had broken up or a major problem had arisen, to solve the problem as an emergency while deferring for the year fresh surface dressings planned on roads that may have been dressed five or six years ago. The condition of the latter roads would not be as bad as those affected by frost.

By being given full discretion, local authority members had sufficient money to prioritise repairs required because of the exceptional nature of the freeze and the flooding. In my locality and elsewhere, I am glad to say, they are using that discretion. The public fully accepts that, for example, expected maintenance work on roads in parts of my county will not proceed because other roads closer to the Shannon were completely overrun and have to be repaired as a matter of urgency. This is being done.

Giving local authorities discretion is preferable to handing out allocations in the usual way and then trying to find money we do not have to deal with the problem, which would have been a rather ineffective way of proceeding. The best way of using resources is to give that discretion to the local authorities.

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