Sarah O'Reilly (Aontú) | Oireachtas source

After I was elected as a councillor in Cavan County Council, one of the main issues I campaigned on was the poor quality of the roads and road surfaces in counties Cavan and Monaghan. Many Senators in this Chamber today have heard about the substandard roads that we and our citizens have to travel on. The people in my area pay motor tax and carbon tax and some of them pay two or three tolls going to work every day, just to end up driving on roads that are substandard. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, was recently asked about the increase in tolls. His response was that these tolls go towards the upkeep of our roads. However, there is no evidence of that in counties Cavan or Monaghan. There is no upkeep of the road structure. The road funding announced yesterday was much anticipated. Councillors came from Cavan to meet with Ministers. They expected and advocated for more money but what we got was more of the same. For our regional and local roads in 2025, we received €10.084 million. This year we received €10.727 million.

In my municipal district there are no national routes or national secondary routes. We rely on regional and local funding for our roads. We have huge industry, which needs to get product out to market. That is not happening. Why is this issue being raised time and again? Is it falling on deaf ears? We need a substantial increase to roads funding if the improvement we need is to be achieved. It is simply not good enough that roads get worse and worse while taxpayers are fleeced by tolls. I look forward to another announcement. I kept looking at the figures last night to see what was I missing because an increase in funding was expected. There has been an increase but it does not keep up with the inflation rate, as it is supposed to.