Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Durkan for bringing this matter and the condition of the road to the House's attention.

The improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads is the statutory responsibility of each local authority in accordance with the Roads Act 1993, as amended. Works on those roads are funded from councils' own resources supplemented by State road grants, where applicable. I am told that the maintenance of the rampart road from Ballagh to Timahoe in County Kildare is, therefore, the direct responsibility of Kildare County Council.

The Department of Transport says that it provides grant funding to assist local authorities in carrying out their functions as the statutory road authorities. Within the available budget, the Department's grant funding for the maintenance of regional and local roads is allocated, the Department says, on as fair and as equitable a basis as possible to eligible local authorities. Grants in the main grant categories are allocated based on the length of the road network within a local authority's area of responsibility, with some account taken of traffic.

As the Deputy says, the matter of the construction and improvement of road on peatlands has always been a very challenging task in geotechnical engineering. Rampart roads, which are generally narrow raised roads without verges, can be constructed over peat, but particular difficulties, as the Deputy said, arise with roads over peat because peat provides such a poor foundation for road pavement as it is frequently weak and highly compressible compared with more normal subsurfaces, such as boulder clay. Because of that, it is very hard to maintain a high level of serviceability on such roads. Councils have approached the Department from time to time asking whether the cost and difficulty of maintaining roads over peat could be taken into account in the grant allocation process. The Department's position on that is that grant allocations based primarily on the length of network in a particular local authority are seen as the most equitable approach. If other criteria such as road condition, for example, were used as a basis for grants, then, the Department says, that could have the effect of rewarding councils that do not prioritise roads maintenance when allocating their own resources.

As part of its policy development role, the Department has initiated a review of existing guidance on the management of roads over peat with a view to assessing performance of different methodologies to provide updated guidance.

I am not exactly sure what that last bit means - forgive me - but I think the Department is cognisant of the particular difficulty with peat.

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