Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are sharing time. The biggest trouble in our roads is water on the roads. There has been no drainage programme in Kerry like we used to have for many years. I will only talk about my own place. What is happening is the side drains are not being opened. The related inlets used to play a pivotal role in times gone by. They used to let the water run in off the road into a drain or somewhere. They took it off the road anyway but that is not happening anymore. Where water stays continuously on the road, we finish up with a pothole. The surface finishes up torn and broken and then we try to patch it.

I have another gripe with the patching of potholes. Now, our local authority is so reduced in numbers, including general operatives and foremen, that the crews are barely filling the potholes with black tar or tarmacadam. It is a cod of a job. Before, they were able to do a perfect job with a thing called a DuraPatcher. A crew would clean out the pothole, put in some tar, put chips on top of that, put tar on top of that and put chips on top again until they levelled it up properly. That is not happening anymore because the crews are so depleted. In one area, the Killarney electoral area, there were six crews. I will only mention that place. There were six crews there to keep the drains open and the potholes filled. Now, we are down to two crews. We simply do not have the staff. The story from Kerry County Council is that the council does not have the funding to pay more staff.

We got no money for cul-de-sac roads or class 3 roads since 2011. Until then, there was discretionary funding that usually came around August or September. Each county councillor was allowed to nominate a road or two. If we assigned two roads in Kerry to each councillor, that would be 66 roads. It would be grand if we even got one road for each of them. I am asking the Minister of State to give his Minister this message. The Minister should restore the discretionary grant that used to be spent on class 3 roads and cul-de-sac roads. It is important but we have not had it since 2011. That is why so many of our minor and cul-de-sac roads are in the state they are in. If the Minister can get his head around that and get funding, it would sort out many of the problems in our county anyway.

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