Vol. 438 No. 4
I move:
"That Dáil Éireann condemns, in the strongest possible manner, the failure of the Government to provide immediate and adequate resources to bring the local road network system up to an acceptable standard, particularly having regard to the economic and social hardships being caused by the continued underfunding for the maintenance of our non-national roads."
I wish to share my time with Deputies Kenny, Deenihan and Creed.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
On behalf of Fine Gael I call on the Minister for the Environment, Deputy Michael Smith, to put in place a ten year rescue programme or plan for the maintenance of our non-national roads, the county, regional and often forgotten urban roads. I call on the Minister to acknowledge the major crisis due to progressive cutbacks and many years of under-funding. I call on him to give some indication that he cares that the elderly and, in particular, the very young who are often prisoners in their own homes after dark because of the treacherous condition of the road outside their gate or hall door. He should show he understands that these are "the vital transport arteries of the local economy and often the sole means of access for economic activity". I am quoting from the Government's National Development plan, which further states:
Non-national roads have a very important economic role in Ireland because of the dispersed nature of the population and industrial development, the importance of agriculture and tourism as generators of wealth and employment and the increasing attention being given to rural development and urban regeneration... Their improvement is a vital complement to the development of the national road network.
There is no indication that the Minister understands the meaning of the word "vital". Will he, in his reply, concentrate on the issue of non-national road maintenance, potholes and surface dressing? He should not attempt to confuse the beleaguered public—with 9 June in mind perhaps I should say the electorate—by quoting at length the moneys for improvement works, "specials", co-financed work or expenditure on our national networks.
Is the Deputy not interested in that?
Not in the context of this motion.
That is clear.
The Minister should read the wording of the motion which concentrates on the maintenance of county and non-national roads. I ask him to please stick to that wording.
We do not need a re-run of the terms of reference of the National Roads Authority. Commendable as all these figures are, we really want to know the Minister's policy in regard to the filling of potholes in counties Wexford, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Tipperary, Cavan and Monaghan — every county is in crisis in this respect.
The only figure we need from the Minister is what he is prepared to spend immediately on alleviating the crisis on the roads to avert a major collapse and wholesale abandonment of these roads by local authorities. A sum of £28 million is provided for the work this year. While this is a vast improvement on last year's figure of £12.3 million, it is still only a paltry increase. The additional £15 million provided in the budget is taken from a fund of £250 million in amnesty money. The Government lost a major opportunity to ensure, without any pain to the complaint taxpayer, that the proceeds of the amnesty were used to fill the potholes, maintain our county roads in a passable condition and effect a reduction in the present appalling surface dressing cycle of between 27-30 years in different areas.
During the mid-1970s the surface dressing cycle for county, regional and urban roads reached the norm in engineering circles of ten years. The persistent under-funding and progressive cutbacks in the discretionary block grant for maintenance has caused a deterioration to at least a 27 year cycle for surface dressing. A sum of £1.09 billion is now needed for a county and non-national roads maintenance programme just to achieve the position which obtained in 1978. The Minister expects headlines and plaudits for spending £28 million this year. However, this should be put in the context of the funding required and the opportunity which was available to him through the once-off amnesty moneys to put a rescue programme in place.
We need a rescue plan or programme for our non-national and county roads phased over ten years. I will be reasonable — we do not expect a sum of £1.09 billion today or some time in 1994. We need a ten year plan with annual spending on the maintenance of county, regional and largely forgotten urban roads of approximately £300 million per annum to get back to the acceptable cycle of ten years. I say "acceptable" not merely because of the social and economic hardships caused by pitted lunar landscape-type roads in every county but, more importantly, to ensure skid resistance levels on their surface which comply with acceptable safety standards for drivers and commuters generally. As the surface dressing cycle has increased from ten to the present 27 years, road surfaces have become increasingly shiny and accident rates have increased accordingly in rural areas. I am talking about lives and personal injury as well as economic and social hardship.
After one of the wettest 12 months on record, roads have never been in such a bad condition nationally. The key to maintaining a good road is proper drainage. As part of a rescue programme for these roads I urge the Minister, in co-operation with his colleague, the Minister for Labour, to concentrate Social Fund moneys on a social improvement scheme or a new CDP scheme to keep the drains and water courses on these roads clean. We undervalued the work done in this area when labour was plentiful. It is not long since Wexford County Council had 700 outdoor staff working on its 1,800 miles of non-national roads. Today the number of workers has dwindled to 180, one man for every ten miles. This is an impossible job. Indeed one could say one man for every 20 miles is necessary when one considers that both sides of a road have to be maintained. This was cost effective work and prolonged the life of the road surface by preventing water loggoing and continuous flooding.
If the Minister disputes any of my figures he should speak to the author of the most up-to-date report on these roads, the county engineer for north Tipperary who, in his capacity as chairman of the County and City Engineers' Association, delivered a report to the annual conference of the Institute of Engineers. That report is the source of my figures; it is not any political or make believe source — those are the facts. I recommend that report to the Minister. I know there is no shortage of reports but I have no evidence to suggest that the Minister takes any notice of the professionally documented concerns of local groups, engineers or the tourism or agriculture sectors.
I have a report on the infrastructural requirements of the Gaeltacht areas of County Kerry. Every county would have one — or several — reports of this kind. Page 24 of the report refers to the tourist routes and the major problems in some areas. Perhaps the Minister could explain why an important area such as Slea Head has been closed since before Christmas. I believe it is due to a mudslide. Why should an area like Dunquin, which depends so much on its infrastructure, be so disadvantaged by constant neglect from this Government?
The conclusion of this report states:
The effect of the chronic state of the infrastructure in these areas is exacerbated by their location and total dependence on inward and outward flows of people (tourists) and produce (milk, fish exports etc.) for survival.
The few resources that the areas have, the few aspects in which they have any competitive advantage, are the only basis on which they can survive economically, and thus socially. The ability of areas to capture the benefit of these resources is inextricably linked with infrastructure such as roads and ports.
There is a window of opportunity from now until the end of this century to achieve adequate provision of such basics. It should be seized with determination.
The report is referring to basics such as roads and ports.
The local councils take the brunt of the palpable anger of the public because of the condition of these roads. The Minister for the Environment is content to allow them take the stick. If he reneges on his responsibility in this area and fails to show his immediate commitment to resolving the crisis of our county roads, I will ensure that he and this Coalition Government get the direct blame for the breakdown of our road network in rural Ireland. If the Minister fails to act he deserves to take the blame and the public deserve to know that he, and not the local councillor, is the person to whom they must direct their anger.
Bitumin has never been cheaper. Surface dressing at £1 per square meter is very cost effective and far better value than pothole filling at £3 per square metre when surface dressing has been neglected. A total of £28 million for 1994 is being allocated for the maintenance of our non-national county roads. The need is in the area of £300 million to begin to resume the surface dressing cycle. In Wexford alone, we would need £8.5 million this year to get back to the 1978 position and we are regarded as having some of the best roads. Even in Wexford, 23 per cent of our non-national roads are classed as critical or impassable. A further 17 per cent rate as fair. Our minor county roads are appalling.
Apparently the Euro buzz words "Maastricht", "peripherality" and "social exclusion" mean nothing to the Minister. There is no indication that he even understands them. The Minister should not forget about the £250 million once-off amnesty money. The complaint taxpayer deserves to benefit from that ill-gotten money by having it spent on their county roads. That money is available this year and as the Minister who presided over the total collapse of our national roads system through sheer neglect, the Minister for the Environment is the only person who will take the blame ultimately if he fails to live up to his responsibility in this area.
I wish to share my time with Deputy Creed and Deputy Deenihan.
I am sure that is satisfactory and agreed.
The motion in Deputy Doyle's name is self explanatory. I note that the Minister has not bothered to take notes of any point that Deputy Doyle made in the first 15 minutes of this debate. That does not, of course, mean he is not aware of the validity of the points she has made.
The Minister for the Environemnt presides over the worst non-national roads situation that we have ever had. Daniel Corkery wrote a book entitled The Hidden Ireland— the Minister may have read it. The hidden Ireland is alive and well; it is hidden behind mounds of bushes, shrubs, grasses and inaccessible roadways. We have 3,000 miles of non-national road in County Mayo, many of them built over poor bog foundations, and I am inundated with complaints from doctors, travelling shop owners and bus drivers about their inability to travel on a substantial amount of that roadway.
Through Government policy and private incentive there has been a huge increase in the amount of private and State planting under Coillte Teoranta. The output from the province of Connaught will more than double in the next five years. I am not sure whether the Minister understands the significance of doubly laden articulated trucks removing timber on sub-contract from private or State forests and the damage they do to a road structure that was never designed or intended to carry such weights. The damage is scandalous and there is nothing the local authorities can do about it. They bring in certain by-laws and regulations and hope for the best but that does not work.
In our county the local authority is required to resurface the roads every 29 years. As someone said to me last week, even a kitchen floor would wear out in 29 years with only a single individual walking on it. I remember the Minister's predecessor, now EC Commissioner Flynn, broadcasting to the nation that war was being declared on potholes— they were to be banished. There would never be a pothole again in Ireland. He has lost that argument by ten million to one. As the comedian said, there are no more single potholes; they are all married with large families.
We have 3,000 miles of road in our county. We proposed, through work similar to a social employment scheme, giving a person a five mile stretch of road to open the water tables, improve the drainage, trim back the verges and the bushes, thereby creating employment for 600 people. That was objected to officially by the union who promised an all out strike if the work commenced because it would interfere with the work of the permanent staff of the county council. There are insufficient permanent staff to carry out this work and, as the Minister is aware, if the grass verges and bushes are not cut back the drains block up which leads to a build up of water on the roads and together with bad weather and heavy weights, the structure of the road simply collapses.
I do not know if the Minister has ever heard of places such as Dereendafderg, Tawnyculawee, Aughaloíntín, Srahtaggle, Drumminahaha, Corrnagushlawn, Clogher, Ballyglass or Cappanacreha? These are English-Irish names. I would ask the Minister to step out of his State Mercedes and drive in any other vehicle through any of those villages. He will find that these roads are practically impassable because this Government has neither the concern, the initiative nor the wit to provide the necessary method of employment and divert sufficient moneys into the saving of this county roads structure. He will rue the day that the ordinary people of this country are left, in the words of a Fianna Fáil Deputy last week, with "motorways for the traffic and muckways for the people". It is simply not good enough. In 1994, the citizens who pay high insurance and high taxes are entitled to a decent roadway upon which to travel to their homes and carry out their daily business. For example, surveys undertaken in Germany show that an average day's driving in a German car on Irish roads is about the equivalent of six months driving on similar category roads in Germany. This clearly shows that the Minister for the Environment presides over a disaster. If he does not do something about it, or convince his colleagues in Cabinet to do something about it, he will be letting everybody down when, far from being at 50 per cent in the polls, he will sink into the morass through which people have to wade daily. I remember travelling by Glenamoy in the course of constituency work and being faced with the most unlikely sight of three bullocks drinking from the one pothole in the middle of the road. Presumably the Minister for the Environment would not like to preside over that type of scenario. I hope it has been rectified since.
In the words of Deputy Doyle's motion this evening, the Government stands condemned over what is now the worst non-national roads network condition that ever prevailed here. Yet there are 300,000 people out of work and we were promised again this evening, on the six o'clock news, another 100,000 jobs through the community enterprise boards and so on. A child in a sixth class said to me the other day, that the theme of the Olivia Newton-John song "Take Me Home Country Roads" no longer applies because one would now need a hovercraft to gain entry to some of our villages.
Deputy Leonard on the Government back benches knows what I am talking about, as does Deputy Hughes. Every rural Member clearly understands its impact at their clinics, advice centers or however they may describe them, with a constant stream of people complaining about the state of the roads. Indeed, a former Minister for the Environment, Deputy Flynn, when he sat opposite pronounced to this nation in presidential tones that the war was on against potholes. The present Minister is carrying the banner and must bear responsibility. To date he has let us down.
The concluding remarks of Deputy Kenny afford me a good introduction for a letter I received from a constituent which, with the Chair's permission, I should like to read into the Official Report:
Dear Mr. Creed,
I was walking down the road this morning near to my house and was trying to avoid the potholes when I fell. A small part of the road had given way from under me. I hurt my knee, not badly, but I was rather shaken. The road has eroded due to water pushing up from underneath, I think. My argument with the council is that the road needs resurfacing, not repairing in patches. At the time of writing two men are filling in potholes in the rain, hence the holes are full of water and likely to reappear. I am nearly 70 years old and virtually a prisoner in my own home at night as I cannot venture out due to the state of the roads. I live alone and cannot afford to have an accident as there would be no-one to look after me. I am sorry to keep worrying you over this matter but it is really quite a problem.
Yours sincerely,
That letter could come from any parish or townland in rural Ireland today. The reality is that the Government is about to preside over the greatest spending spree on national primary roads while the rural roads network disintegrates to an unprecedented level. This serves only to highlight the extent to which the Government is out of touch and, consequently, its faulure to match scarce resources to real needs, representing a missed opportunity in rural communities of enormous proportions. In a nutshell, the Government has more money than sense.
In an effort to stifle the voice of the people local authorities have been by-passed as the National Roads Authority prepares to ride roughshod over local communities, throwing money around for by-passes and motorways like confetti. For example — and on this matter I am in correspondence with the Minister which I hope will be brought to a satisfactory conclusion — on the N22 the twin villages of Ballyvourney and Ballymakeery are about to be by-passed on the strength of proposals on the part of the National Roads Authority despite the fact that probably this represents the best stretch of national primary route on the N22 between Macroom and the county boundary, and that all members of Cork County Council in the area and the local community are opposed to this development. Local democracy, common sense, value for money, all valuable criteria, have been thrown out the window.
There are numerous examples of roadways nationwide that would benefit if we could match scarce resources to the real needs obtaining. In the example I cited it would be much more beneficial if the resources being thrown at a non-existent problem were allocated towards resolving a very serious problem on a major tourist route, the road between Blarney and Killarney and from Blarney to Macroom. That road takes more traffic than many national primary routes but, because of its designation, will not benefit one iota from improvements to be carried out through resources available to the Department of the Environment. Likewise, the road from Macroom to Bantry via the villages of Inchigeelagh and Ballingeary is desperately crying out for improvement, yet not one penny will be earmarked from the increased resources available to the Department for it.
We are led to believe that a compulsory MOT test of all motor vehicles will be introduced in coming years. If the rural roads network continues to deteriorate at the pace it has in recent years it is highly likely that not one car will pass that test without enormous annual investment on the part of owners. We must remember that the rural economy is dependent on milk lorries, ration lorries, fertiliser lorries, cattle lorries traipsing over inadequate rural roads.
It is high time we matched scarce resources to real need.
The best value for money that can be obtained by local authorities would be through an investment in manpower to restore their local area offices to the level of employment that obtained prior to the redundancy package of the late 1980s.
In my local area office, out of a total of 15 employees in 1987, almost half opted to accept voluntary redundancy and very few of those people have been replaced. Even with unlimited financial resources for goods and materials, this creates a demand which cannot be met due to inadequate levels of manpower. If resources become available to the Minister's Department he should immediately allow local authorities to deploy additional workers on roadways, opening drains or clearing dykes thereby ensuring that water is kept off our road surfaces.
Cork County Council is in the process of formulating a detailed submission to the Minister's Department in an effort to secure additional finance for the deployment of employees on our roads. I hope that submission will be favourably considered by the Minister.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. Last evening I attended a public meeting in Ballyduff in County Kerry, attended by more than 100 people. The people in that small parish expressed their indignation and frustration at the condition of the county roads in their locality. Since the Minister was not present last evening I am sure that some of his party councillors who were present, as was a Senator of his party, will advise him of the level of frustration and bitterness displayed at that meeting. I have rarely attended a public meeting where such anger was expressed. It is an example of the feeling in rural communities. The Minister knows that a major scheme of road strengthening must be carried out on the non-national roads. Our county road network is vital for the economic well being of rural Ireland and for tourism. Because of Government neglect in recent years thousands of miles of our county road network have disintegrated and are now almost unusable at severallocations. The funding for county roads falls abysmally short of what is required.
The county roads system was not designed to cater for the loading, frequency and speed of heavy traffic. The sustained usage of poorly constructed roads by heavy articulated trucks, school buses, cattle lorries, heavy goods vehicles and so forth is causing and will continue to cause severe structural damage to roads and bridges. There have been shortfalls in local authority funding for several years. These have been reflected in greatly reduced annual programmes of bitumen surface dressing and road strengthening. Surface deterioration inevitably follows.
Most of our tourist attractions are on non-national roads. Tourists are becoming increasingly frustrated because of damage caused to their cars by punctures, blowouts, etc. Our image abroad will suffer if we do not improve the standard of our roads. We expect tourism to grow by over 50 per cent during the next five years and to produce in the order of 35,000 jobs. Surely county roads play a major part in the growth of our tourism industry. They are a vital part of the necessary infrastructure for the development of tourism. It is important that county roads are not seen in isolation but as a part of the overall infrastructure.
I am glad Deputy Doyle referred to the serious problem at Slea Head. It is ridiculous that the Slea Head road, from which you can visit the Blasket Islands and the new interpretative centre at Dunquin, is closed to the public. A special grant should be made available immediately to have the matter rectified. I am seriously concerned about the general condition of our county road network throughout County Kerry. I am constantly reminded, as I was last night in Ballyduff by individuals and communities, of the low level of service which our roads can provide.
The county road network in Kerry consists of approximately 2,400 miles, 2,300 miles of which have been surface dressed. The network varies considerably in quality and carrying capacity. There are several hundred miles of county roads which are up to 20 feet wide and are subject to increasingly heavy traffic volumes. This increase can be attributed to a large extent to the changes in farming methods during the past 20 years, for example, bulk milk collection and bulk delivery of fertiliser.
In excess of 75 per cent of county roads in Kerry are constructed on boggy foundations. This leads to the deterioration of road surfaces under heavy loads and to the deformation of the road embankment in times of dry weather when the peat foundations tend to dry out and contract. A recent survey carried out by the county engineer indicated that 50 per cent of our county road network or some 1,200 miles are at a serious risk of disintegration. The cost of refurbishing 1,200 miles would be approximately £24 million at present costs of £20,000 per mile. To strengthen these roads would cost £9 million. It is a welcome departure in the budget that county roads are recognised but the allocation will prove to be minuscule.
The Minister for the Environment will recall addressing Kerry County Council, the first holder of that office to do so. We appreciated that and we requested increased funding for local improvement schemes and for the discretionary grant. A few months later we received a decrease of £200,000 in our discretionary grant——
The Deputy had better not ask him back.
——and a decrease of 33 per cent in funding for local improvement schemes.
It is a bit like Deputy Dick Spring going to Brussels for the Maastricht money.
I appeal to the Minister to examine this year's allocation and to compensate, in some way, for last year's shortfall. Of the £15 million granted this year, I hope County Kerry will receive in the region of £800,000. This would allow for £200,000 for each of the four engineering district areas in the county. When that sum is broken down further, it allows for about ten miles of county road strengthening. Without fear of contradiction I can say that 90 per cent of the county roads of North Kerry, which amount to about 400 miles, are disintegrating. It is impossible to drive at speed over those roads — 40 miles per hour would be the maximum — without destroying your car. Despite what the Minister thinks about the road conditions in County Cavan and elsewhere, the county road network in north Kerry — my own constituency and that of the Tánaiste — is the worst in the country.
There are great autobahns stretching across parts of the country. While it is nice to brag about these autobahns in Europe I think we have gone overboard to some extent. I would be the first to recognise that we need good national, primary and secondary roads systems but some of these roads are over-engineered. We need good national thoroughfares to move goods throughout the island to our ports and so on, but too much money is being put into these roads to the neglect of our country road infrastructure.
Unless there is a major investment in the country road network over a sustained period, rural areas will suffer further depopulation and isolation. A good country road network is essential to the continued survival of rural Ireland. That contributes as much to rural regeneration as all the grants we receive from Brussels through the various schemes. Investment in the roads network is crucial to the future of rural Ireland. I hope the Minister will take on board the suggestions made tonight and will note the local arguments put forward.
I move amendment No. 1:
To delete all words after "That" and substitute the following:—
"Dáil Éireann notes the financial commitment of the Government to assisting local authorities to maintain local roads in a satisfactory condition and, in particular, notes:
— the substantial level of grants provided by the Exchequer for this purpose in recent years;
— the increased funding allocated for non-national roads in the National Development Plan;
— the provision of £86.9 million made for such roads in the Estimates for 1994;
— the additional £15 million provided in the budget for the maintenance of such roads, bringing the overall provision for State grants for non-national roads to the record level of £101.9 million in 1994."
I want to put a few basic facts on the record of this House, facts that speak for themselves, facts that make nonsense of the preposterous allegations made by Deputy Doyle and some of her colleagues about the Government's position on the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads. I rest my case on these facts. Not one penny was paid by the State by way of grants for maintenance work on county roads in the years up to and including 1988. Total grants paid to county councils for all works on non-national roads came to £39.3 million in 1988. In the five years 1989 to 1993, grants paid to county councils for non-national road maintenance and improvement works totalled £336 million, or £67 million a year, on average.
How much for maintenance?
Taking account also of the contribution from local resources, total expenditure by county councils on non-national roads in the past five years was well in excess of £600 million, or more than £120 million per year, on average.
For every pound spent by county councils on non-national roads in 1988, the State paid just over 70 pence. For every pound spent by county councils on these roads last year, the State put up nearly £1.40.
Total grants to all local authorities for non-national roads this year will be £101.9 million. This is £26.6 million more than the amount provided in 1993 and it brings State spending on the maintenance and improvement of these roads to an all-time record level.
Yes, it is maintenance.
Deputy Doyle made her contribution devoid of interruption of any kind. The Minister must be accorded the same courtesy.
The total amount of resources being provided by the taxpayer and the ratepayers for every kilometre of the 87,000 kilometres of county roads is £2,000 a year. When Deputy Doyle says that it takes 27 years to maintain or resurface a road what she is actually saying is——
The Minister is confusing the public.
Deputy Doyle must desist from interrupting. If the Deputy cannot bear to listen to what the Minister has to say she has a remedy.
I am asking him not to confuse the public but to give them the facts.
I sat silently listening to Deputy Doyle. The least she can do is do me the courtesy of listening to me in the limited time I have and I am sharing my time with Deputy Brendan Smith. When it is said it takes 27 years to resurface a road, that means that the relevant local authority has received during that period for that road £54,000 for that kilometre.
These figures clearly demonstrate the Government's commitment in recent years to the provision of the maximum possible funding for non-national roads. In case there may be any doubt about the matter, I remind the House that statutory responsibility for these roads still rests with local authorities.
I knew the Minister would blame them.
The planning of projects, the carrying out of road works and primary responsibility for funding all come within the remit of these authorities. My Department provides financial support — approaching 60 per cent of the total cost in 1993 — but we have not taken over responsibility and control in this area from the local authorities, and have no intention of doing so, as Deputy Doyle seems to want.
Blame the local councillor.
In seeking to pin total responsibility for the funding of local road works on my Department, on me and on the Government, is the Deputy suggesting that less effort is to be required of local authorities in the performance of functions such as the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads for which they have always been responsible?
From where do they get the money?
Is Fine Gael suggesting that local authorities should not display due diligence in seeking to fulfil their statutory functions in relation to these roads?
Increase the rates for the commercial sector. It is preposterous to blame the local authorities.
Whatever happened to the principle of subsidiarity?
The Minister has choked them.
Does this apply only in our dealings with the European Union, while having no place in our internal structures of administration? It seems that Deputy Doyle should reflect on matters such as these before this debate concludes.
I am asking Deputy Doyle to desist now.
I do not want to listen to the fictional report before us.
In comparison to other member states of the European Union, Ireland has a very extensive system of public roads. In fact, our length of road per 1,000 population is at the upper end of the scale at 26 kilometres, almost twice that of Belgium, Denmark or France. The corresponding figures for Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK are in the range of five to eight kilometres.
That is rubbish. That is no help to the people.
These figures help to illustrate the challenge we face in maintaining these roads in an acceptable condition. The Government fully accepts that challenge.
The Minister does not accept the responsibility. He blames the local councils.
I would ask the Deputy one more time to desist.
We accept that non-national roads play a very important economic role in Ireland——
Please, Deputy Doyle.
——because of the dispersed nature of our population and industrial development and the importance of these roads to agriculture, tourism, rural development and urban regeneration. Many of these roads are vital arteries of the local economy, and their improvement and maintenance to a good standard is necessary to complement the development of the network of national roads.
Spending on non-national roads must, of course, be seen in the context of spending by local authorities generally. In 1994, total spending by local authorities will amount to more than £1.6 billion, broken down between current spending of about £1,100 million and capital expenditure of about £500 million. Roughly half of all this spending is funded by a series of different grants from the Exchequer amounting to about £850 million this year, all non-repayable grants, nearly all of which comes from my Department. Almost all of the capital spending is funded by 100 per cent State grants, covering the cost of major construction works on roads and water and sanitary services facilities and much of the housing construction programme.
It is to be expected that, in an effort to improve and expand the range of local services, local authorities would wish to have the level of State grants increased, but we must be realistic about what we can accomplish with the resources available to us as a community.
Calls for increased spending on any service must be seen for what they are — calls for more taxation, or for expenditure cuts in other areas.
What about the amnesty money?
Order, please.
Even Deputies opposite cannot evade this reality. It may come easy to some of them to gloss over this from the comfort of being rooted in Opposition for so long and the certainty, in the light of the latest polls, that Opposition is where they are going to stay. However, the Government must take full account——
And full responsibility.
Let the compliant taxpayer benefit from the amnesty money.
——of the living reality that there is no bottomless well of resources to meet all demands. There are many genuine demands competing for scarce resources and the Government has to strike a balance between expenditure and taxation. Calls for increased levels of expenditure in particular areas of local authority spending are understandable, but the options we face are either to take funds away from other services, or to increase taxation. Those who call for more spending without saying where the funds should come from——
I am telling the Minister where the funds should come from.
——do not deserve to be listened to. I have gone to local authorities and heard at first hand their concerns about improving services. I acknowledge these concerns but I have to explain the finite limit of the resources available for day-to-day spending. The Government's aim is to reduce rather than increase the overall level of taxation and to achieve a fair allocation of the overall resources available. Local authorities are getting a reasonable share of these resources and they have been particularly well treated when it comes to financing road work.
That must be the classic statement. Is the Minister in an ivory tower in the Custom House?
The arrangements for funding work on non-national roads have evolved over a number of years. State grants to county councils towards the cost of works on county roads have, since the early 1970s, been provided almost exclusively through a block grant mechanism with special grants for specific improvement works in exceptional circumstances. In the period up to and including 1988, block grants could be used to supplement expenditure from county council's own resources, including rate support grants, for the maintenance and improvement of regional roads and the improvement of county roads. There were no grants for county road maintenance in the years up to and including 1988 and Fine Gael had better listen to that because when they were in charge they did nothing about it.
The Minister please without interruption.
The Deputies have a cheek.
The year 1988 was a long time ago. Does the Minister deny that there is a crisis in regard to our non-national roads?
In 1989 it was decided to combine the old block grant with funds that had been available since 1986 for strengthening country roads and to form a new block grant for the improvement of regional and county roads——
The Minister is in his ivory tower.
——and a block grant for the maintenance of regional and county roads. This is the first time grant assistance was made available for maintenance works on county roads. The old block grants could not be used for that purpose.
These changes coincided with the commitment from the Government to make available £150 million over the three year period 1989-91 in discretionary block grants to county councils to supplement their expenditure on maintenance and improvement work. In the event, discretionary grants paid in those years totalled £182.4 million, and the high level of assistance has been maintained in 1992 and 1993.
Advocates of increased funding for road repairs or other maintenance work on non-national roads regularly tell us that European Union sources such as the European Regional Development Fund or the Cohesion Fund should be drawn on for this purpose. The reality is that neither fund will assist maintenance expenditure.
I accept that.
Limited European Regional Development Fund support was received for improvement projects on non-national roads, subject to conditions established by the European Union Commission, in the period 1989-93; this amounted to approximately £34 million, only a small portion of total spending in that period. Cohesion Fund support is, of course, confined to projects on national primary routes forming part of the trans-European roads network; it is of no relevance to our non-national roads. The fact is, therefore, that when it comes to providing grants for maintenance work on non-national roads, the Exchequer alone has to meet the cost.
In 1993, discretionary grants totalling almost £62 million were paid to county councils for the maintenance and improvement of regional and county roads. When special grants for individual improvement projects and grants paid to urban authorities are taken into account, a total of £75.3 million was paid in grants to local authorities to assist them in meeting their responsibilities in respect of non-national roads.
I am well aware that the heavy rainfall in 1993, notably in mid-June, early October and especially in December and January 1994 resulted in serious damage to roads in many areas. Rainfall in December was over 150 per cent of normal in most of the country, while many parts of the north and west had double the normal amounts. With the costs arising from earlier bad weather, many local authorities had insufficient contingency funds in reserve to carry out necessary repairs and maintenance towards the end of the year. In the circumstances, the Government decided to use some of the revenue generated by the amnesty to increase by £15 million——
An insult — £15 million out of £200 million.
——the funds available for the maintenance of non-national roads this year. This brings the maintenance provision to an all-time high of £28.3 million.
Spending £28.3 million on maintenance will not fill potholes.
Combined with the provision for improvement works, the 1994 allocation now totals £101.9 million, over 35 per cent more than last year.
I will be notifying discretionary grant allocations to the local authorities shortly. In addition, a scheme of specific grants is being introduced this year to meet 100 per cent of the cost to local authorities of individual road improvement projects. These grants will amount to £33.6 million in total and will be paid in full to local authorities from the Exchequer.
There is something radically wrong because the roads are falling apart around us.
The payments are expected to qualify for aid from the European Union and the projects selected will, therefore, have to satisfy European Union requirements. In particular, these co-financed projects must have a significant and quantifiable impact on the local economy and on employment.
That will not fill any potholes.
The programme as a whole will be targeted at regional and local roads of importance to the generation of economic activity and jobs in industry, tourism, fisheries, forestry, agriculture or rural development. Guidelines on the nomination of projects were issued to local authorities last week and it is now open to them to nominate suitable projects which meet the criteria laid down.
This new scheme of grants will help to meet the objectives of the National Development Plan as regards the tourism industry and the promotion of development generally. Local authorities have been asked to ensure a reasonable spread of proposals relating to the various economic sectors and to engage in consultation with relevant sectoral interests for this purpose. The overall aim will be to achieve a package of proposals which can best meet the individual needs of each local authority area.
This will not fill the potholes.
Overall, between 1986-94, State grants for non-national roads, including urban roads, have gone up from £40.48 million to £101.9 million, an increase of 152 per cent. This is the real indicator of our commitment this year and over the next six years.
The total of £101.9 million which is being invested by the Exchequer in non-national roads this year amounts to £1,171 for every single kilometre of the non-national road network — or £1,874 for every single mile. These are staggering figures, and I suspect that many road users would find them hard to believe.
A staggering figure.
It is crucial that the taxpayer gets the best possible return from this investment and I will, therefore, be pursuing this aspect with the local authorities.
It is also imperative that local authorities maintain their own commitment to investment in the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads and that the substantially increased contribution from the State is not used by them as an excuse to reduce funding from their own resources, as some Fine Gael councillors tried to do in the past week.
How dare the Minister say that?
The ratepayers can bear the burden no longer.
State grants are provided to supplement local authorities' own resources, not to replace them. The most recent data available indicate that the authorities are spending from their own resources at the same general level, in money terms, as in the mid-1980s——
The Minister has no respect for the commercial ratepayers.
——but the real value of this expenditure has been reduced by inflation in the interim.
Order, please.
We have also seen a dramatic shift in the balance of funding for non-national roads since 1986. In that year, grants accounted for one-third of total expenditure on the maintenance and improvement of these roads. By 1993, the State contribution had risen to 55 per cent and it will increase still further this year, given the record level of grants. In the case of regional and county roads, the State contribution increased from 29 per cent of total expenditure to 58 per cent over the period since 1986.
Euro money is available for the national primary routes. That is why spending on the county roads went down.
The data available indicate wide variations among county councils in the provision made in their estimates for maintenance and improvement work on regional and county roads.
Extra Euro money brought down spending on the rest.
On a cost per kilometre basis, councils with the highest provision are spending up to eight times more than those at the other end of the scale. While I appreciate that needs will vary somewhat from one area to another, it is very difficult to account for variations on this scale.
I am reluctant to become involved in reviewing the level of spending on a service which I regard as the preserve of local authorities. However, I have no intention of continuing to pay out ever larger sums in grants to local authorities who, by the standards set by their own colleagues, are not making a reasonable effort to contribute to a solution of the road maintenance problem.
The Minister is choking the commercial ratepayers to death.
I intend, therefore, to examine the options I might pursue to secure an adequate commitment of local authorities' own resources to work on local roads, and to explore the possibility of linking road grant allocations to each authority's own level of funding, instead of the mileage related basis adopted up to now. The Exchequer is simply not in a position to shoulder a constantly increasing proportion of the costs associated with the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads, and I am not prepared to ask the taxpayer to contribute further for this purpose, unless there is genuine additionality in all areas.
From the ratepayers.
Overall, I am sure the House will agree that the Government has more than played its part in the maintenance and improvement of the non-national roads system.
That is laughable.
This is clearly demonstrated by the very significant and increasing financial support given to local authorities for this purpose. Deputy Doyle and her colleagues call for yet more expenditure by the State on non-national roads——
From the tax amnesty, I am being quite specific.
——on top of the increase of more than £26 million already provided for in the budget this year. In doing so, she ignores the view of her constituency colleague, Deputy Yates——
Wrong again. Tax amnesty money should be spent on the county roads.
——who led for the Opposition in the budget debate and strongly criticised the Government because of what he described as our commitment to high spending.
Tax amnesty money should have been spent on county roads, the Minister should not try to confuse the issue.
The extra money flowing to the Exchequer should, he said, be used to reduce taxes instead of being absorbed in more spending. Of course, Deputy Yates tried, like his colleagues, to have things both ways, by stating that Fine Gael would support a proposal to devote a large portion of the tax amnesty proceeds to the resurfacing of county roads. Even this suggestion by Deputy Yates is itself doubly inconsistent. It ignores the fact that his own party fought bitterly against the introduction of the tax amnesty. Second, it ignores the fact that the major portion of the tax amnesty proceeds——
The ill-gotten money should be spent on complaint taxpayers.
——is being devoted to eliminating the health board deficits which, in the same speech, Deputy Yates rightly singled out as a major difficulty for small firms who have had to wait long periods for payment.
Yet another contradiction is the fact that Deputy Doyle and her Fine Gael colleagues voted against the modest increases in the various excise duties provided for in the budget; as usual, the Deputy has no difficulty in calling for extra spending——
Extra spending from the tax amnesty, the money should go back to the complaint taxpayer.
——but is unwilling to play any part in providing the resources needed to finance that spending.
As one final example of Fine Gael's erratic and unstable policy positions, and of their efforts to be all things to all men and women——
The Government provided £10 million for Dublin Castle — there will be a big party there.
Last November, in a Fine Gael policy document on tax reform, there was a suggestion that there should be cuts in local authority spending, with housing singled out. If cuts in housing spending are what Deputy Doyle is really calling for in this debate, to finance more spending on roads——
I am not sure how housing cuts will fill the potholes.
——then she should say so.
We want the potholes filled using the revenue raised by the tax amnesty. The Minister cannot even understand this.
In conclusion, let me quote for Deputy Doyle a passage taken from the report of the Commission on Renewal of Fine Gael which I would commend strongly to her:
There is a lack of consistency in the message emanating from the Party to the public and a tendency for individual members of the Front Bench and the Parliamentary Party to address issues in an unconsidered way, failing to recognise when it is in their interests, and the interest of the Party as a whole, to either consider more carefully what is being said, or indeed, to remain silent.
Does the Minister accept there is a crisis?
Given its long and vast experience in Opposition, one might have expected better from Fine Gael.
The Minister should take a trip down the country to assess the scale of the crisis.
One might have expected it to put forward policies which at least contain a thread of consistency or which are based on conviction but it is flailing and flying in all directions in a desperate attempt to come up with anything that would make the headlines and score a point against the Government. A prime example is its attitude to public expenditure. On the national stage it would have everyone believe that the Government should further cut public expenditure but at local level Fine Gael Councillors are calling on the Government to increase urgently expenditure on county road maintenance and a host of other public services.
That is correct, using the £250 million raised by the tax amnesty. The potholes should be filled.
Fine Gael cannot have its cake and eat it. It is being foolish in the extreme if it thinks it can continue to insult the intelligence of the public with this kind of double talk. If it is to oppose, it should do so in a way which is credible and honest, not through threadbare antics.
How dare the Minister talk to us in that fashion? This is a right wing Government.
Shame on the Minister for blaming the local authorities for causing the crisis.
I ask Deputy Doyle to desist.
I wish to share my time with Deputy Michael Ahern.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
I compliment the Minister on his efforts during the past two years since his appointment to the Department of the Environment to address the serious difficulties that exist in parts of the country in relation to roads. The Minister has given us example after example of Fianna Fáil's commitment in Government to address the serious need to improve substantially our county and regional road network.
What about the potholes?
This is borne out by the increase of 152 per cent in State grants for non national roads between 1986 and 1994. I quickly checked the document Building on Reality published by Fine Gael and Labour when in Government in 1985 and in the section on roads there was no mention of the importance of the non national road network. The calls made tonight by Deputy Doyle and her colleagues ring hollow when one considers that the priorities indentified by that party when in Government were, according to that document, the provision of an adequate inter-urban system for the major towns, ports and airports, the elimination of traffic hold-ups by the provision of bypasses for towns on national roads and the reduction of urban congestion. Where did rural Ireland figure in that policy document?
Where is Cavan-Monaghan mentioned in the document?
If I recall correctly, Deputy Doyle was a Minister of State at both the Department of the Environment and the Department of Finance at that time.
What was the surface dressing cycle in 1986?
The Minister, Deputy Smith, has visited each local authority and listened to the views of its members. I would like other people to listen.
What we need is fact, not fiction.
In the case of my own county he had a most productive meeting with council members and officials and made it his business to assess at first hand the difficulties we are facing in County Cavan in relation to roads. I believe the Minister and the Taoiseach ensured that provision was made in the National Development Plan for partial funding of the non-national road network using Structural Funds.
In the recent debate on the Supplementary Estimate for the Department of the Environment the Minister indicated that particular problems were being experienced in County Cavan and that it was a special case in relation to funding. The county needs a substantial increase in its allocation for roads this year and I look forward to the Minister providing us with the help that we need.
The Minister commented on the local authorities' own contribution to the cost of roadworks. Cavan County Council has consistently increased its allocation from own resources. Its service charges are the highest in the country. We are paying our share and the council does not leave it to the last hour before discharging its statutory responsibility.
Like most councils.
Particular difficulties are being encountered throughout County Cavan. In a survey carried out in 1991 the county engineer identified the main factors contributing to the deterioration in road standards. These include weak saturated drumlin soils covering 77 per cent of the total area of County Cavan; poor drainage conditions; increased allowable axle loadings under Europeans Union legislation; intensive agricultural activity — 15 million tonnes of material are transported along the regional and county road network annually; the large volume of cross Border heavy commercial traffic; and the lack of a railway system, which has led to increased heavy axle loadings.
There is an unanswerable case for increased investment in our regional and county road system. This would lead to a reduction in costs for industry, agriculture, tourism and general road users.
Agreed.
In his speech the Minister referred to the heavy rainfall in the latter half of 1993. In the north-west there was double the normal amount. This contributed significantly to the further deterioration of the road network.
The reduction in the number of Border crossings from 14 to four has led to intensification to traffic along the routes that are still open. As I indicated earlier, we have no railway service and it has been estimated that the lack of such a service has led to a 10 per cent to a 17 per cent increase in heavy axle loadings on the roadways in County Cavan. Since the rail network was closed in the county almost 30 years ago all goods have to be transported by road. This has added greatly to the already significant infrastructural deficiencies in the county compared with most other parts of the country. The county has had a hard uphill battle to attract industry and to develop its enormous tourism potential which, thankfully, has gained recognition in recent years. The county is dependent to a large extent on the agri/industry and the major co-operatives sited along regional and county roads. It should be remembered that the intense agricultural activity is spread over a wide area and access to the farmyard is as important as access to the place where farm produce is processed.
On the question of the development of tourism, the roads tourists become most familiar with are minor roads and laneways leading to waterways in the county. Those involved in tourism in Cavan-Monaghan are aware that the principal complaint of many tourists relates to the unacceptable condition of some access roads and this may cause some damage in developing tourism.
The importance of non-national roads is highlighted in the National Development Plan which states:
Non-national roads have a very important economic role in Ireland because of the disperse nature of population and industrial development, the importance of agriculture and tourism as generators of wealth and employment and the increasing attention being given to rural development and urban regeneration.
The European Union's commitment to rural development will mean nothing unless it is prepared to provide substantial funding to provide access to rural areas and to ensure that those projects under which employment is being created and revenue generated in rural Ireland are not placed at a serious competitive disadvantage due to transport costs.
In conclusion, I make a special appeal to the Minister to increase substantially the 1994 allocation for roads in County Cavan. This money would be spent well by the county council.
I thank Deputy Smith for sharing his time with me. I support the amendment tabled by the Minister. During the past six months there has been unparalleled rainfall. This has caused some problems even in my own county where there is an excellent road structure. I have no doubt, having regard to the funding that is to be made available by the Minister, that these will be resolved in the months ahead.
To say the least, Fine Gael has a cheek to table this motion, given that when it was in Government between 1983 and 1987 it provded no money for maintenance works on county roads. The Minister outlined the record of his party since 1988 when £40 million was made available for county roads, while £336 million was made available in grants between 1989 and 1993. This works out at £67 million a year. A total of over £600 million was invested in roads during that five year period.
The Deputy can play with the figures but the potholes have still not been filled.
This and previous Fianna Fáil administrations have more than played their part in the maintenance and improvement of non national roads.
They are a shining example.
It is clear that there is confusion among the members of Fine Gael, given the opposing views expressed by Deputy Doyle and Deputy Yates. Deputy Doyle has called for more expenditure on top of the £26 million increase already announced in this year's budget. Deputy Yates, Fine Gael's finance spokesperson, continues to criticise the Government and describes it as a high spending Government. Is it any wonder that Fine Gael are floundering in the polls with 16 per cent support given that the people who lead that party speak with forked tongues?
When the money that has been allocated by the Minister is spent on the roads in the months ahead the people will see that, unlike Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil in Government spends money on county roads. In this regard, we have secured funds from Europe for the first time.
I wish to share time with Deputy Cullen. I am pleased that this crucial motion on county roads has generated heat and caught the interest of Members. I hope that interest and the anger expressed will be reflected in future years in the amount of money invested in the non-national road system, the county road structure in particular.
The deterioration in the surface conditions of county roads throughout the country is the clearest indication of the erosion of the quality of rural life in the past 15 years. Our centralised system of Government has, for years, set itself an entirely different set of standards from those which rural Ireland would set for itself. The centralised Dublin Government sees a need for modern motorways along our east coast connecting harbours from Belfast to Cork, and modern highways connecting the larger urban centres, but has never seen the concurrent need to maintain good access roads between the homes of rural dwellers and their local market towns. The priority for rural dwellers has been decent roads to their homes from the main roads and good main roads to the local urban centres. Central government planning has been continuously in conflict with the needs of our rural population.
Two separate sets of priorities exist. Government Departments see the need for modern inter-connecting highways as the only priority to the practical exclusion of the real needs of the majority of rural dwellers. The funding of the county road system has been neglected, resulting in rapid deterioration of the condition of the pavements. This neglect adds hugely to the transport costs of rural people who suffer constant damage resulting in the need for expensive repairs to their cars. This, in turn, has turned rural living into a nightmare, adding to despondency, driving away investment and discouraging young people from settling in rural areas. The very fabric of society is endangered due to the neglect of the county road system; this point cannot be exaggerated.
Over the years I have championed the cause of rural Ireland and highlighted the importance of maintaining good local roads. I raised this issue with Ministers for the Environment over the past 15 years and I regret that any increases, reluctantly granted, were minimal and unrealistic.
I welcome the announcement by the Minister that the allocation this year for non-national roads and in particular for county roads will be increased substantially. I am conscious that he has an opportunity to do so because of the exceptional funds available from the tax amnesty, whatever we may think about it. I am concerned that this increase is being funded from an exceptional source and that there is no assurance in the Minister's speech, or in the National Development Plan, that there will be a higher level of commitment in future to meet the needs of the county road system which has been deteriorating at an alarming rate. What is needed, therefore, is a rebalancing of the Government's priorities in regard to where it spends the moneys available for road improvements, road maintenance and new road construction.
In view of all the heat generated here tonight, I should remind the House that the most savage cutbacks in rural investment, in county roads, were experienced when Fine Gael was in Government with Labour. I am here long enough to be able to make that statement with some authority. It may suit Fine Gael's cause today to promote this motion in its strident terms, and my party will support it, but I hope that during this debate we will not hear Deputies Dukes, John Bruton or even the echoes of Richie Ryan making cynical contributions. It would be hypocritical to do so as they, when holding the Finance portfolio, deliberately starved the county road system of funds.
I have always believed that the ruination of local Government in this country was Deputy Dick Spring's decision, as Minister for the Environment in the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition, to remove the statutory obligation on the Exchequer to allocate rate support grants in lieu of the amount which would have accrued to each local authority if rates on houses had still been in place. Until the funding of local government is put back on an equitable statutory basis, the erosion of services, the deterioration of our roads and the increasing ineffectiveness of the local government system will continue.
The Taoiseach's favoured fundamentals are really irrelevant if the number of people out of work continues at an unacceptable high level. The fact that the Minister quotes various sums of money now being invested in county roads can also be irrelevant if their condition continues to deteriorate. This year's increase is welcome but there is no commitment to an ongoing investment which would deal with the extent of the problem, and the problem is far greater than the Minister acknowledged in his contribution. Juggling with figures and thinking that because an increase will apply the problem is being dealt with is not logical or enough to satisfy us that the continuous deterioration in the road network is being tackled.
In effect, the motion is about our great national embarrassment, potholes, which are the evidence of neglect of a most valuable national asset built up over the decades with the hard-earned money of taxpayers who for years now, have seen their investment destroyed due to negligence. There has been a lack of staff to keep the water tables open to drain the water which lodges and softens the surfaces which are then pounded by the one million motorcars that travel that 46,000 miles of county roads. Damage is also caused by the heavy trucks which travel rural areas as a result of advances in industry and forestry and the activities in dairy co-operatives. All these developments place a new strain on the fragile road structure that keeps rural Ireland operating. The Minister did not give a commitment to tackle this problem.
In all there are 57,687 miles of public roads reputed, as the Minister said, to be the highest road density in Europe relative to our population. Of this total, 2,200 miles are designed as national primary and national secondary roads. These national roads comprise only 5 per cent of our total road network, yet the Minister has committed £1,299 million, mostly European Union funds, to be spent on major improvements on the national routes over the next six years under the National Development Plan while at the same time planning to spend only £475 million on the 54,487 miles of non-national roads over the same period. From these figures it must be clear that there will be no great change of policy. The national highways will get the money, the non-national roads will continue to be starved of money.
There is a serious imbalance in the Minister's priorities between national and non-national roads. Indeed, anybody travelling our primary roads over the past year has seen an extraordinary wastage of funds, perfect road pavements have been ripped up to be replaced by expensive tarmacadam surfaces where no immediate or astonishing improvement is deemed to have taken place. Yet over the past six months these private contractors have been out on our highways, on our main roads where millions of pounds of EU money is being invested at a pace which would seem to indicate that there is no shortage of funds. The ripping up of perfectly good surfaces to be replaced by a higher quality finish is an extraordinary extravagance in a country where non-national roads are collapsing.
There is a stark contrast between investment in our primary routes and that in our non-national routes. There is also a stark contrast in respect of the Minister's priorities as to where funds should be spent, how they should be spent and the balance to be maintained in relation to our road requirements. The Minister's quotations in respect of the ability or inability of local authorities to invest more money in the system are pathetic when one considers how strapped local authorities are because of the current system of funding. Until a fundamental change is made in the way in which local authorities are funded, a Minister cannot call on them to invest more money in roads. They do not have the capacity to collect funds. The Exchequer grabs all the money for central Government and starves local government, the level of government which is, perhaps, the most important, because of its closeness to the people. That is a serious fault of Government administration which has been highlighted in the Barrington report and other studies. Only when the Government is prepared to tackle that issue will we be able to make the progress of which this country is capable.
A former Minister for the Environment, Padraig Flynn, once said he would fill in all the potholes, but he failed, took off to Brussels and joined the Commission of the European Union, who now dictate that Structural and Cohesion Funds must go into national routes while the potholes in rural Ireland get bigger and bigger. The Minister, Deputy Smith, recently told us that it is pointless filling in potholes and that people will have to wait several years more before they can expect county roads to be repaired.
The Connemara people were the first to revolt against potholed roads. They formed an organisation called Cumhacht to agitate for better county roads. I recall the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Spring, as Minister for the Environment, refusing to meet members of that organisation. They contested Galway County Council elections and elected their own councillor, Councillor Peadar O'Toole, who highlights the pothole problem at every opportunity. They also elected a member to Údarás na Gaeltachta, denying Fianna Fáil a seat on Údarás for its Connemara candidate — a history making event.
The people of Cavan have revolted and have had four councillors elected to Cavan County Council. The latest county to revolt is Longford, the Taoiseach's county. I expect it will not be long before their revolt will begin to hurt where it counts, in the electoral arena. Rural Ireland is awakening to the power of the ballot box and no doubt the European Parliament elections will be the next opportunity rural dwellers will have to tell this Government it must heed the needs of our people or suffer electoral consequences.
One million car owners paying £209 million per annum in road tax are very angry at the Government who are prepared to pay £6 million per mile on a highway but will not provide a penny for major improvements on county roads. How can the Government justify spending £1,184 million on 250 miles of primary routes over a six-year period, while 56,000 miles of roadway will remain potholed during the same period?
Lest anyone might think I exaggerate the extent of the problem or the importance of county roads, I would like to put on record the report of Galway's county engineer, Mr. Flood, a man not given to exaggeration. He stated that the road structure in Connemara is particularly poor and many of those roads are used extensively for tourism, aquaculture, fishing, forestry and so on. He stated also that the county council's overall employment rate dropped by 60 per cent in the past ten years and that no surface dressing has been carried out on regional or local roads in County Galway since 1986, except for that carried out in conjunction with strengthening or surface restoration. He concluded his report by stating that unless a rescue package is put in place for regional and local roads the deterioration will continue, resulting in a total collapse of the road network in parts of that county. The Minister's announcement in the budget and the Minister for the Environment's announcement tonight can in no way be considered an adequate rescue package.
If the Minister continues in office for much longer he will not have any responsibility because he finds a mechanism to fob off responsibility, mainly to local authorities, for every issue raised in the House. He reminded the House this evening that the statutory responsibility for county roads still rests with local authorities. That is true, but they do not have the funding or the means of raising funds. It is easy to say where the responsibility lies when the Minister holds the purse strings. It is no longer acceptable for local authorities to be put through the hoops, as has been the case for the past number of years. The most important report received by the Minister was that prepared by the city and county engineers, namely, the development plan from 1990 to 2009. That report sets out the statistical figures and the direction in which we should be heading in the coming years and it states that the minimum figure required is £179 million per annum.
The reality in regard to dealing with our county and regional roads as opposed to our national roads is that if adequate funding is not provided now those roads will deteriorate further and the cost of rejuvenating them will increase substantially. This is not similar to a Department or Minister deciding to shed a programme of activity for one or two years because of a lack of resources and picking up where he or she left off in one or two years' time. I do not know how the Minister for the Environment at the end of this decade, whoever that might be, will deal with the reality of our county and non-national roads. The problem is getting worse. I welcome the Minister's announcement in the budget that extra money will be provided, but it is inadequate in the context of the job to be done. The argument put forward by the Minister this evening that it is not his responsibility is indefensible.
Does the Minister believe that the main companies and industrial concerns which generate the most jobs are located along our national primary routes? Does he not realise that that is not the case and that county and regional roads play a major role in the delivery of goods and services to our national routes? Does he not realises that much of the chaos and the increased cost factor in regard to our road network lies in the fact that the county roads which deliver the services to the national primary routes are in a deplorable state?
In conjunction with the EU, the Government has been pouring money into various projects, one of which is the regional airport in Waterford. We are grateful for that. In spite of difficult times that company has survived. However, we cannot construct a road to the airport. At present the road to the airport is similar to a boreen. Successive Ministers for the Environment have promised funding for that road, which serves a large region.
Until such time as the Department provides funding for the completion of that project, the money already spent on the airport by the Government and through EU grants will not bear fruit. The allocation for county and regional roads is unacceptable.
