Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to speak first on the investment in local regional and national secondary roads, specifically in regard to the town of Mallow, where €300,000 has been allocated to progress the northern relief road. I know the Minister of State met the mayor of County Cork and senior officials of Cork County Council recently, where they made the case for the full allocation of approximately €1 million-plus to be made to progress that plan to the planning application stage. My colleague, Councillor Eoghan Kenny, received correspondence from the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, last week to say that the €300,000 allocated should be enough to progress that project to the planning stage. If the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, is talking to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, he might tell him that it will cost €500,000 for an environmental impact assessment alone. To state that it is going to cost €300,000 to get that project to planning is not a credible answer to correspondence from Councillor Eoghan Kenny. We are asking for the €1 million-plus to at least allow us to get to the planning stage.

Cork County Council and Cork City Council have paid out €8 million in compensation claims and public liability claims in the past five years.

That has to tell us something. It has to tell us that there is a serious underinvestment in footpaths and in the public realm throughout the country, particularly in County Cork, where there is more than 25,000 km of road networks.

I welcome the fact that the Government is not opposing the motion but we are calling for greater investment in the very basic infrastructure over which people traverse on a daily basis throughout their lives. Footpaths are key, and I want to speak to housing estates in particular, which are now largely ignored, particularly where they are taken in charge by a local authority. The Minister of State talked about extreme weather events. We now have a situation in Cork where large local estates that were taken in charge are prone to serious flooding issues during storms or heavy weather events. As part of the Minister of State's thinking, in which he talks about developing a new strategy around how we fund for climate action and mitigation, I ask him to please factor in those housing estates we are all speaking for here today. It is not just about local and regional roads but also about those larger housing estates, which need investment as well, particularly where they have been taken in charge.

We need to get back to basics in this country regarding what local authorities do. We are blue in the face as public representatives in making cases to local area engineers. I feel sorry for local area engineers and anybody working in any transport or roads department of any local authority because they tell us they are now trying to penny-pinch and do bits of a road here and bits of a footpath there. They cannot do the entirety of a footpath or road because they do not have enough money. We are going back over and looking for little bits of money on five-year programmes. If we have started part A or phase 1 of a stretch of road, five or six years down the line we are at phase 4 or 5 and phase 1 has to be overlaid again. It is nonsensical and we just need a little bit of cop on.

The Minister of State should have as part of his remit or the proposed review an audit of how moneys for roads programmes are utilised. If I was to say to my constituents that the entirety of the road will be done but they would have to wait two years, they will gladly wait two years as opposed to having part of a road done next year. People understand as well so a little bit of common sense is what we are asking for.

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