Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Since the 2008 recession, a significant backlog of works on regional and local roads has built up in all local authority jurisdictions across the country. The estimated cost of the backlog is in excess of €5 billion. For this reason, grant assistance from the Department continues to be focused on the protection and renewal of the public road network.

It bears restating that the public regional and road network is over 96,000 km in size and while grant funding has increased significantly in recent years, it has not been possible to address the backlog of works across the country even with 90% of available funds being directed to protection and renewal works. For this reason and in view of the funding being provided under a local improvement scheme by the Department of Rural and Community Development, I consider that I need to continue to concentrate funding on public roads.

If I were to consider allocating funding for non-public roads, this would reduce the funding available for public roads. In this context, one initiative taken since the Department of Rural and Community Development's introduction of a local improvement scheme is the provision by my Department of ring-fenced funding for the community involvement scheme. This scheme is designed to provide for the repair of more lightly trafficked public rural roads, which tend to be considered only towards the end of road authorities’ annual roadworks programmes. Under this scheme, €29 million approximately was paid to local authorities over 2020 and 2021 and this year's grants include funding of a further €15.2 million for the community involvement scheme. All available grant funding for 2022 has been allocated. There was an increased allocation recognising that new investment in our local roads is important for safety and for rural connectivity. It also saves money in the long run because if we let them go, it is much more expensive to get them back. On that basis, we allocated the funding.

See this speech in context