John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)

On behalf of the Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, I thank the Senators for raising this important matter. The improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads is the statutory responsibility of each local authority in accordance with the provisions of section 13 of the Roads Act 1993. Works on those roads are funded from local authorities' own resources supplemented by State road grants paid by the Department. The initial selection and prioritisation of works to be funded is also a matter for the local authority.

When road grants for regional and local roads are allocated each year, the Department does not hold a reserve allocation at central level to deal with weather contingencies. Such an arrangement would mean a reduction across all local authorities in the road grant allocations to them at the beginning of each year. Instead, the allocation made to local authorities is inclusive of the weather risk factor. Local authorities are expressly advised that they should set aside contingency sums from their overall regional and local roads resources to finance necessary weather related works.

The amount of money provided in the 2010 Estimates for funding regional and local roads is €411.177 million and this year's allocation will be based on that amount. The Minister hopes to announce these allocations by mid-February. In the meantime, the Minister has issued a circular to local authorities reminding them that with regard to local and regional roads, the role of the Department is to provide grants to supplement road expenditure by them. Some local authorities contribute as little as 5% to their total road expenditure from their own resources. Local authorities need to prioritise increased expenditure from their own resources on their own roads this year in view of the current difficult situation.

The Minister also asked in that circular that local authorities give priority to the repair of damage to regional and local roads caused by recent weather and he authorised them to incur expenditure under certain grant categories of up to 25% of the amount allocated for these categories in April 2009, pending the allocation of the 2010 grants. The Minister has also allowed the local authorities flexibility to revise their 2010 restoration improvement programmes.

The Department has asked local authorities to provide an assessment of the additional road costs incurred by them as a result of the November flooding and of the recent severe weather, over and above their normal winter maintenance expenditure, and to identify the principal components of the additional costs. The Department has received some information on the impact of the November flooding but the collection of information on the effects of the recent cold weather is ongoing. The Minister appreciates that it will take a while to establish precise costs as the damage is still becoming evident and being quantified on a daily basis.

The Minister has asked all local authorities to provide information as soon as possible. This will enable him to assess the full impact of the severe weather when deciding on the 2010 regional and local road grant allocations. In allocating those grants the Minister will prioritise expenditure to deal with damage caused by the recent exceptional weather. Considerable resources have been spent in recent years on both the national and regional and local road networks - some €5.6 billion since 1997. Every effort therefore must be made to safeguard this investment.

Our response to recent events will have to carefully target the available resources to address the most urgently required repairs, taking account of key factors such as safety, the strategic importance of the particular road, traffic levels, etc. For national roads, the National Roads Authority generally fully reimburses local authorities for their expenditure on winter maintenance on national primary and national secondary roads. The Minister is aware that this expenditure has also increased substantially owing to the bad weather. The NRA will be reviewing its expenditure priorities for 2010 in the light of the damage caused to national roads by the recent bad weather.