Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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312. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the detail of the regulations regarding the work local authorities can carry out in the event of vegetation or blockages posing a threat of flooding, including damaging properties and risking structural damage to the road network; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34369/16]

Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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The statutory provisions in relation to works local authorities can carry out to prevent damage to roads are set out in the following sections of the Roads Act 1993, as amended.  At present no regulations have been made.

Section 70(2) of the Roads Act 1993 provides that landowners and occupiers of land must take all reasonable steps to ensure that a tree, hedge and other vegetation growing on their land is not, or could not become, a danger to people using a public road and that it does not obstruct or interfere with the safe use of a public road or the maintenance of a public road.

Section 70(2) further provides that if a tree, hedge or other vegetation is, or could become, a danger to those using or working on a public road, or obstructs or interferes with the safe use or maintenance of a public road, the road authority may serve a written notice on the owner or occupier of the land requiring action to be taken in order to remove the danger or potential danger within the period stated in the notice.

Section 70(7) provides that an owner or occupier who fails to comply with such a notice served by a road authority is guilty of an offence.  A person guilty of an offence under section 70(7) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding €5,000.

Section 70(8) provides that the road authority may take the action specified in the notice itself or such other action as it thinks fit where the person on whom the notice was served fails to comply with it.

Section 76 of the Roads Act, 1993 sets out the powers of road authorities in relation to the drainage of public roads and also includes a requirement that the owner or occupier of any land adjacent to a public road must take all reasonable steps to ensure that water or other material is prevented from flowing onto a public road. This section also includes provision for the road authority to require the owner or occupier to undertake specific works in this regard, and where any such a person fails to carry out such works the road authority may carry out such works itself.