Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That was when the Minister, Deputy Ross, announced a measly €25 million in additional funding for maintenance and repair. I told the House that the Minister's allocation would ensure that our roads continued to deteriorate after almost a decade of neglect. I said this was another example of the Minister's lack of interest in the maintenance and provision of infrastructure outside of his own domain, Dublin city, and that this bias was indeed very worrying for all road users, given the dramatic deterioration of our road safety record in recent times. Considering all of that, did that stop Fianna Fáil from supporting the Government? Did it impress on Fianna Fáil the need to ensure that it used its confidence and supply arrangement with the Government to protect our regional and local roads? Of course it did not. Here we are, almost two years later and we are in a worse position than we ever were before.

The 2018 budget for the maintenance of our roads is approximately €100 million less than what is required. Councils were informed a couple of months ago that the budget to maintain 5,000 km of national and secondary roads was going to be cut. Transport Infrastructure Ireland has stated it is obliged to honour existing funding commitments to motorway and bridge maintenance. That means that the bulk of cuts will come from the roads maintenance budget. That is expected to be an approximately 30% drop in funding for maintenance of our roads. Louth County Council was told that its maintenance grant was going to be cut by 30% and that that would result in an 18% reduction in road works. That is disgraceful, considering the amount of road works, particularly road safety improvement works, that need to be carried out in Louth. The Minister has claimed that road allocations have increased for 2018. However, this cut is further evidence that the budget is totally insufficient. The road maintenance budget, as we know, has been dramatically reduced in the past decade. The Minister, Deputy Ross, has been aware of the issues and underfunding since he took office. He continued to ignore the funding issues in this sector. The Committee of Public Accounts recently heard that road maintenance is underfunded to the tune of between €90 million and €100 million per annum, and with only 130 km of the necessary 400 km of annual maintenance being carried out, that is a disgraceful record. The road network will deteriorate by €1 billion per annum without investment. That is shocking.

Given the Minister's current attitude, we are leaving ourselves open to significant issues with our roads and potentially major road safety issues unless these matters are addressed and serious effort and commitment given to address them. On top of that, I have been told the Minister is lowering the level of lighting on motorways, at motorway junctions and on regional roads. He is doing that to cut costs but at what cost to safety? That is a direct result of the €6 million cut to the roads budget this year. Serious road safety concerns arise when one starts to reduce lighting on the public road network to cut costs. On top of that, there has been the failure to reinstate specific improvement grants. It is incredible that no moneys have been allocated, given that we are continuously told that we are in a recovery. The Minister had announced a range of projects funded by this grant but these were either projects that were previously committed to or which had started and were signed off on. I know this because I have spoken to officials in Louth County Council. That is why Sinn Féin tabled the amendment for the reinstatement of the specific improvement grant. It was a grant which started at around €50,000 and went up to €200,000. It covered serious road safety issues, particularly at junctions and sight lines where roads need to be aligned because of serious road safety concerns. Instead, we have the safety improvement grant, which only covers minor works costing between €2,000 and €40,000. That is a pittance of a roads budget.

I have moved the amendment and hope that it is accepted and that specific improvement grants are reinstated. I also want to talk about the poor quality. There is not a town or village in this State that could not speak to the desperately poor quality of resurfacing materials. I know somebody else touched on it earlier. One waits years for roads to be resurfaced but then such inferior quality products are used that within six months, the roads are back to the state of disrepair they were in prior to being worked on. It is like the old saying, buy cheap, pay twice.

This is what we have seen. Road maintenance is under-funded to the tune of €100 million per annum, which is very serious. The Minister knows this and I do not think he cares as long as the problem is outside Dublin city. I question whether he does care. The fight he put up for his roads budget was obviously meek given the allocation he received.

There is nothing wrong with the content of this motion. The only problem I have with it is that is signed by the great pretenders, Fianna Fáil. It has been propping up and endorsing the roads budget for the past two years and it is now calling for the funding which it did not push for only a couple of months ago. Fianna Fáil members are here now whining about it. If Fianna Fáil did not support the transport budget for all the reasons outlined in this motion, it should not have backed it. There is no point in Fianna Fáil tabling a Private Members' motion that it knows has no legal standing.

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