Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister to the House to deal with this matter, which concerns a forgotten road in the Dún Laoghaire ward, Pottery Road. It is in the Dún Laoghaire development plan to redesign and reconstruct that road and there has been a part 8 procedure and a recent public consultation. It has been decided at local level in the council to proceed with the improvement scheme for that road. It is important in the sense that there is a level of residential density and development in the area with new apartment blocks. There is an industrial estate and the Pfizer plant expanded in the past number of years. There are such estates as McIntosh Park and, most recently, the development of a Lidl supermarket. Yet the road has all the features of a country road in the middle of the city. The residential and commercial development generates an unsustainable level of traffic and this raises some important safety issues. The road is frequently subject to flooding and was most recently featured as having widespread flooding.

I ask that the Minister include this in the programme for local and regional roads. The Minister recently announced the programme for 2009. The allocation for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council was the second lowest after Carlow County Council, but that is a general observation. My specific point is that there should be provision for this scheme given its importance to the economic vitality of the area, the efficiency of the industrial and commercial operations in the vicinity of this road and adjoining it and the safety of through traffic and the residents in the area. I would be grateful if the Minister could take on board these observations and give some indication of the status of the road in the Department's assessment and when it may be included in the Department's roads programme. Since it has not got into this programme I hope it would feature in the programme for 2010. Perhaps the Minister could clarify this.

Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister for Transport thanks the Senator for raising the matter of the improvement of Pottery Road, Dún Laoghaire. In response, the Minister would like me first to make a number of general points about the resourcing of regional and local roads.

Responsibility for the improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads in its area is a matter for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, to be funded from its own resources supplemented by State grants. Road grants for regional and local roads in 2009 were notified to all local authorities on 2 February. The Minister is particularly pleased that, in a year when Exchequer funding is under enormous pressure, he was in a position to allocate more than €600 million for the maintenance and improvement of the network. This is a clear indication of this Government's continuing commitment to improving our regional and local roads network, which is critical from economic and social perspectives.

In the case of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, the total grant allocation from the Department in 2009 is €8.711 million. As part of its overall allocation, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council was allocated funding under the Department's specific improvement grant scheme. Under this scheme, local authorities are invited to submit applications to the Department for consideration and when submitting applications, councils are invited to prioritise them.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council submitted five proposals for consideration under the specific improvement grant scheme in 2009, listed in order of priority. Three schemes prioritised by the council received allocations, totalling €3 million. The council's application for funding its Pottery Road project, which was fifth on its priority list, did not, however, receive an allocation. All regional and local road grants for 2009 have been committed and there are no additional funds at the Minister's disposal from which further grant allocations could be made at this time.

The Department will be seeking applications for 2010 under the specific improvement grant scheme later this year and it will be open to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to re-prioritise and submit an application for the Pottery Road proposal at that time. Local authorities may also use their discretionary improvement grant allocations from the Department to fund eligible improvement schemes. The 2009 discretionary improvement grant allocation to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is €366,000. The selection of works to be funded from this allocation is entirely a matter for the local authority.