The motion, by implication, suggests that responsibility for non-national roads rests with the Government, whereas in fact, as the Fianna Fáil Party is aware, the legal and financial responsibility vests in the local authorities. The Government is well aware of the problems affecting our non-national roads and has already made two significant responses to deal with these problems. It has provided additional funding in the budget and asked for a comprehensive report on the state of the network so that a proper plan can be in place and implemented over a reasonable period. I suggest these are not the actions of a Government avoiding reality or turning its face in the opposite direction when confronted with a difficult problem — quite the contrary.
Before getting down to the substance of the motion. I would like to stand back from the detail and place the present debate in a broader context. The non-national road network is of particular economic importance because industrial development is widely dispersed throughout the country. Tourism, which accounts for 7 per cent of GNP, is dispersed by its very nature. Agriculture is of much greater importance than in the rest of the European Union, accounting for 22 per cent of exports. To put it very bluntly, if we are to develop urban and rural communities and provide alternative sources of income for our rural population, we must improve our non-national roads.
However, this places a particularly heavy financial burden on our society as, by European standards we have a very extensive system of public roads. For example, for every 1,000 people we have over three times as many kilometres of road as Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. This, combined with the low density of our population and our relatively low level of urbanisation, inevitably means that maintaining our public roads system in general, and the non-national element in particular, creates very significant demands on our resources. As a society we must face up to this and take whatever action is appropriate to upgrade the network to an acceptable standard over a reasonable period.
There has been a huge increase in recent years in the volume and nature of the traffic using our non-national roads, many carrying traffic loads greatly exceeding their limited structural capacity. These loads arise, for example, from bulk milk tankers, oil delivery vehicles, timber extraction operations; heavy agricultural machinery, lorries carrying agricultural produce such as beet and grain as well as traffic serving industry.
Very little of the regional and county road system was "designed" or purpose-built. Most of the network has water-bound macadam, broken stone or gravel bases, over which one or more surface dressings have been provided to seal the surface and prevent water penetration. Many county roads have received one surface dressing only. The width of much of the network is inadequate to accommodate a heavy goods vehicle and an opposing vehicle, with the result that large vehicles over-run the payement causing severe damage to its support.
Weather and ground conditions both affect road condition. Freezing and thawing cycles can break up perished or cracked road surfaces and cause total foundation failure if reaching the subsoil beneath the road. Many rural roads have no satisfactory drainage and water penetration through cracked surfaces which are not drained leads quickly and progressively to potholing and major road damage. The large reduction in essential maintenance operations, such as surface dressing and clearing of drainage outlets, as a result of cutbacks over the years in local funding and reductions in maintenance operatives has made all of these problems even worse and accelerated the decline in the condition of regional and county roads.
There has also been a steady increase in the size and weight of the heavy goods vehicle fleet. The situation has been aggravated by EU directives which provided for increased vehicle axle weights and dimensions and by increases in the number of such vehicles on our roads; goods vehicles over eight tonnes have increased four-fold over the past 30 years and are believed to account for more than 90 per cent of road payement damage. The consequences of increasing vehicle weights and axle loadings, therefore, accelerate the process of damaging road surfaces and bridges, particularly on roads having little structural capacity to withstand such loadings.
A further element which has to be taken into account and to which I will return later, is that there had been a general pattern of decline in the overall funds raised by local authorities for the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads. In fact, the contribution from local authorities' resources as a percentage of total expenditure on these roads declined from over 70 per cent to just 36 per cent in the past ten years. This reduction led to the lengthening of the period between surface dressing applications and other essential maintenance operations.
Due to these factors, the Government sought a report as a matter of urgency on the overall state of our county roads, including changed traffic patterns, methods used for repair, future planning, etc. The aim will be to put before the Government an up to date review of the state of the network, the extent and nature of the problems and the cost implications of bringing the network up to an acceptable standard over the next ten years. When this report is available to the Government — I expect this to be in about two months — the question of funding will be considered further. The Government is fully committed to improving our county roads system and when it has had an opportunity to consider the overall situation, a realistic plan will be put in place to achieve this. The financial implications of implementing the plan will be an integral part of the exercise and the Government will play its part in ensuring that the plan can be properly implemented.
The 1995 grants to local authorities for non-national roads amount to almost £103 million, over £1,900 for every mile of network. This level of funding represents a very significant contribution on the part of the State. It would be useful to outline briefly for the information of the House the main features of the grants package so that Deputies will be aware of the nature, importance and extent of the assistance being provided by the Government in this area. In so far as the grants package is concerned: county councils will receive a total of £91.8 million for non-national roads, including discretionary grants of almost £51 million; urban roads will get a total of £8 million in block grants, in the case of some urban authorities this will be supplemented by receipts under the EU co-financed scheme of specific grants; £8 million is being provided in grants under the new EU INTERREG II programme which will benefit Border counties and certain maritime areas; £1.13 million will be provided to substantially complete in 1995 the re-opening of cross-Border roads on this side of the Border and £34.33 million will be available under the EU co-financed scheme of specific grants for road improvements on non-national roads.
The overall funding for non-national roads in 1995 at £102.898 million may appear to compare unfavourably with expenditure in 1994, but the overall 1994 allocation of £107 million included a provision of an exceptional, once-off nature, namely, an additional £15 million provided in the 1994 budget from tax amnesty receipts. The source of this funding, the tax amnesty, was accepted to be a once-off benefit to the Exchequer and categorical assurances were given that this windfall for the Exchequer would not affect the underlying pattern of spending. In this connection, the financial statement of the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Ahern, on the 1994 budget spelled out that; "certain large once-off benefits in 1994 must not be allowed to cause a mis-match in the longer term balance of the public finances." He also stated that, "as already mentioned, I have applied the proceeds of the tax amnesty — to some once-off items of expenditure." Deputy Ahern added that "further, given their once-off nature, it would be quite inappropriate to apply such receipts either to underpin continuing Government expenditure or to tax reliefs that would affect future revenues."
The special, once-off, nature of the 1994 grants was further recognised by the fact that they were allocated as separate and distinct categories of grants to county councils, rather than being absorbed in the general pool of discretionary grant moneys. Besides making these separate allocations, local authorities were required to apply these moneys to certain categories of work and/or types of roads thereby further distinguishing these moneys from the normal discretionary grants.
If one excludes the additional £15 million provided in 1994, a very different picture emerges in so far as overall expenditure on non-national roads is concerned. For comparison purposes I will include the three years 1993, 1994 and 1995 and the relevant moneys in these years amounted to £75.3 million, £92 million and £102.898 million respectively. This means that the 1995 allocations are up by nearly £11 million or almost 12 per cent on the underlying 1994 expenditure figure and up by nearly £28 million or over 36 per cent on the 1993 expenditure level.
On the issue of overall resources, it is premature for the House to make any definitive judgment about how the 1995 finances for non-national roads compare with the 1994 position. The motion before the House does not compare like with like but, instead, compares the final expenditure figure for 1994 with the provision for 1995 as it stands in March. As the experience of 1994 shows, any judgment at this stage as to the year's final expenditure figure would be purely speculative.
I would like to explain how the non-national road grants are allocated to individual local authorities, as this matter has been the subject of comment, with the implied suggestion that the methods used are somehow unreasonable or unfair to certain local authority areas or parts of the country.
As I said when replying to a number of matters raised on the Adjournment last week, grants for non-national roads are provided as either discretionary block grants for maintenance and improvement works or EU co-financed grants for specific improvement projects. The major portion of the provision available in 1995 for allocation to county councils as discretionary grants has been allocated on a pro rata mileage basis with the exception of the three Dublin county councils which received somewhat higher allocations because of traffic volumes, wear and tear, management needs etc., in their areas. This approach is consistent with the method used to determine road grant allocations in previous years.
The balance of the discretionary grants provision for county councils. that is £5 million in 1995, was reserved for the purpose of making supplementary allocations to councils in counties in which the condition of roads is particularly poor. The amount of the grant allocation to these councils was determined by the Minister having regard to the situation in each county. This is fully in line with previous practice. The £8 million allocated in block grants to urban authorities in 1995 was distributed on the basis of size, within population bands.
A sum of £34.33 million is available in 1995 for the EU co-financed scheme of specific grants for improvement works on non-national roads which are important for employment and economic activity. Allocations in respect of individual projects put forward by local authorities are decided by the Minister following an assessment of their individual merits and their compliance with European Commission criteria relating to the grants scheme. This is fully in line with how the scheme operated in 1994. It is in the nature of this scheme that allocations to individual local authorities will tend to fluctuate from year to year, depending on the size and scale of individual projects. This is inevitable but such "swings and roundabouts" tend to even out over a period of years.
A further £8 million is available this year under the INTERREG II Community initiative which I outlined in the House last week. I hope the House will agree, therefore, that the methods used to distribute the non-national road grants to local authorities are both fair and reasonable and fully in line with previous practice.
It is imperative that local authorities maintain their commitment to investment in the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads and that the very substantial contribution from the State is not used by them as an excuse to reduce funding from their own resources. State grants are provided to supplement the resources of local authorities, not to replace them. In this connection, road authorities are spending from their own resources at the same general level, in money terms, as in the early 1980s but of course the real value of this expenditure has been reduced by inflation in the interim.
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.
I appeal to local authorities, therefore, to provide realistically for the maintenance and upkeep of county roads in particular, and to ensure that the priority being accorded to these roads by the Government and local communities is reflected in the financial commitment at local level where responsibility for these roads is vested.