Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 593: To ask the Minister for Transport the meetings which took place with his Department's officials and a local authority following an incident (details supplied) in County Donegal; if funding has been or will be provided to assist in view of the infrastructural damage caused. [33019/09]

Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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In September, 2004 the Government confirmed the Office of Public Works (OPW) as the State's lead agency in flooding, to be tasked with delivering an integrated, multifaceted programme aimed at mitigating future flood risk and impact. As regards flooding of roads, the improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads is a statutory function of each road authority, in accordance with the provisions of Section 13 of the Roads Act, 1993, to be funded from its own resources supplemented by State road grants. The initial selection of works to be funded from these grants is also a matter for the local authority.

When road grants for regional and local roads are allocated each year, my Department does not hold back 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.

Donegal County Council submitted a report to my Department in June this year in relation to damage to roads caused by flooding. An official from the Department's Roads Inspectorate visited the site of the flooding to evaluate the extent of the damage. In the course of that visit he met with local authority engineers. As an exceptional measure, and in view of the particular circumstances of the Donegal flooding, funding of €130,000 has been provided to Donegal County Council, for works approved by the Roads Inspectorate. Consideration of any applications for financial assistance from local authorities has, of course, to take account of the current budgetary situation, the resources already allocated to the authority and the authority's ability to fund works from its own resources.