John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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28. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport in view of the absolute carnage Irish Water is creating on the roads in County Waterford while installing water meters, if his Department will be providing an increased budget to Waterford City and County Council to repair the damage caused to the road surfaces; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16521/15]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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As Minister for Transport, I have responsibility for overall policy and funding in relation to the national roads programme. The construction, improvement and maintenance of individual national roads, is a matter for the National Roads Authority in conjunction with the local authorities concerned.

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.  The road grant budget for regional and local roads has been fully allocated this year.

While there is already a Specification for Trench Reinstatment works in place since 2002, my Department is engaged with stakeholders, including Irish Water, concerning the updating of this document. I understand that significant progress has already been made and that it is hoped to have the new guidelines available by the end of June. In addition, I have recently made new regulations, Road Traffic (Co-ordination of Roadworks) Regulations 2015 (S.I. No. 139 of 2015). The purpose of these Regulations is to enable the 31 existing local authorities in Ireland to exercise functions under section 101D of the Road Traffic Act, 1961 and in particular to issue directions to persons undertaking roadworks on public roads in their functional areas in relation to such matters as timing of roadworks and the manner in which roadworks are carried out.

The objective of these Regulations and the revised reinstatment document is to move to a situation where reinstatements are fully compliant with required standards so that activities by utilities and statutory undertakers do not impose a cost on the roads budget.