Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The recent budget slashed €88 million off the allocation for regional and rural roads. These local and regional roads are the arteries that connect many parts of the country and are highly trafficked routes. These roads represent 96,000 km of the total 101,000 km of our public road network in Ireland, carrying over 54% of the traffic, but have remained chronically underfunded since the financial crash. Poor quality roads can be a major cause of concern to communities, directly impacting economic development in our regions and rural areas. Ongoing underinvestment in these roads has now created a potential crisis, which the Government conveniently chooses to ignore.

Analysis done by the Department of Transport under the Strategic Framework for Investment in Land Transport, which was published in 2015 and updated in 2019, conservatively estimated that investment of at least €630 million per annum was needed to maintain the regional and local road networks in a steady-state condition. This means that without this minimal investment our road network will continue to deteriorate each year.

My constituency of Cork South-West has one of the worst road networks in the country, according to an independent report by the All Island Research Observatory, AIRO, which was carried out by Maynooth University and commissioned by Cork County Council. It stated that €750 million was needed to bring the roads in County Cork alone up to the standards set out by Engineers Ireland. It also stated that under current Government funding for County Cork roads alone, it will take 52 years to bring our roads up to the standards set in other counties. This report was carried out last year before the Government slashed the roads budget this year.

The National Oversight and Audit Commission 2020 report states that a staggering 33% of local primary roads require urgent structural defect rehabilitation, with 23% of the county's regional road networks being in a similar shocking condition. According to the AIRO report, County Cork has the highest level of structurally unsound roads in the State. This should have warranted a major investment in regional roads in the 2022 budget rather than the cuts announced. Despite this stark warning and many years of serious underfunding for roads since the financial crisis, only €561 million has been allocated for local and regional roads in 2022. This application represents a deep cut of €23 million from the 2021 allocation and is at least €70 million below what is needed just to maintain the existing network.

Additionally, the national roads budget has been reduced by €65 million for 2022. Taken together this means an enormous €88 million or 7% cut, meaning any new capital investment projects are off the table. When the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, kicked ball around Páirc Uí Chaoimh recently before they announced funding for roads for decades to come, were they aware of this independent report carried out by AIRO on behalf of Cork County Council indicating serious under-resourcing of our roads in west Cork? If so, why was no plan announced for any of our urgent road projects in west Cork?

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