Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I can guarantee that I have an ongoing battle to find money to repair roads and I am of the view that it is more important to maintain existing infrastructure than build new infrastructure. The Minister of State, Deputy Ring, is very active in that space as well, and particularly with regard to county roads. There has been some success: the State grants for regional and local roads last year amounted to just over €400 million and the previous year the funding was €377 million. I do not wish to be boastful but there are not many Ministers who can say that budgets are being increased. Local authorities have got the message on own resource expenditure and have put their own money into roads, as last year they put €151 million into such projects as opposed to €136 million the previous year. That allowed much work to be done last summer and autumn to improve roads.

With regard to road safety, we had a meeting on Monday of the high-level ministerial committee on road safety, which involves me and the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, as well as gardaí and other parties. We examined the increases in road deaths this year and there is no clear reason to explain it, although we have many statistics. Interestingly, although road deaths have increased in every region in Ireland, there is one exception in the west, where there has been a significant reduction in road deaths. People tell me that is where the roads are the worst nonetheless.

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