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

In rural areas, in particular, one of the challenges facing businesses and enterprise in general is inadequate infrastructure. In my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, most businesses are indigenous and home-grown. Some of those enterprises started as one-person businesses and are now international companies with their headquarters remaining in Cavan and Monaghan. In my area, the agrifood sector, engineering and construction products are an extremely important part of the local economy. By and large, those are bulky products and as we do not have a rail service, all goods are transported by road. A total of 93% of the road network in County Cavan is non-national and we need more upgrading of these vital arteries for the betterment of local residents and all businesses and for the protection and growth of employment.

With the public finances in good health, there should be much more investment in the road network now to help businesses to reduce cost. The massive increase in road construction costs over the past two years has considerably reduced the amount of work local authorities are able to carry out this year with the allocations they have received to date from the Department of Transport. Additional investment now will prevent further deterioration in road standards and will save the State funding in the future. I believe that substantial additional funding should be provided to local authorities in the middle of this year towards road maintenance and road construction, particularly of the non-national road network. We are all well aware that poor infrastructure adds additional costs to businesses which they do not need in these challenging times.

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