Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)

I want to express my sympathy and condolences to the families and friends of the five young people who were tragically killed in County Louth, and indeed, to the communities of Carrickmacross, Drumconrath and Ardee. They have all been rocked by this. At the same time, I know that those communities will be a strength to those families and relations in getting through all of this.

I want to raise an issue that affects Cavan. I am from a rural area in County Cavan. There are approximately 3,000 km of local roads in the county. There are three municipal areas. The engineers have told me that they have received funding to repair approximately 15 km of road out of 1,000 km in each municipal area. That amounts to about 1% to 1.5% of the road network per year. At that rate, the road repaired this year will not be repaired again for 100 years. There will be no road left. I am looking at road disintegrating as we speak. The weather has been incredibly wet and is wearing away roads. The engineers tell me when they go out to repair a road for tarring, they have to replace all the culverts. They are very badly damaged because they have been left so long without repair. I am calling for immediate action to be taken to increase the allocation to the repair of local roads in our country. We depend on them in rural areas. The funding is much too low. I am calling for a debate with the Minister for Transport on this issue.