Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Despite increases in Government funding over the past few years for the non-national road network, county councillors will be unable to carry out as comprehensive annual programmes as they had planned. This is due to the enormous increase in the costs of road maintenance and road construction products over the past 18 months. In any mid-year review of the capital programme, the Government must prioritise this roads programme for much-needed additional funding. Some 95.7% of the entire road network in my own county of Cavan is non-national. That demonstrates very clearly the importance of such roads and the need to have them brought up to an acceptable standard, both from a social and economic point of view.

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