Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 3 Feb 1994

Vol. 139 No. 2

Adjournment Matters. - County Limerick Roads.

Mr. Neville

I welcome the Minister and thank him for taking the motion which is concerned with the condition of regional and county roads in Limerick. To put it mildly, they are in a disastrous state; the position in County Limerick has never been as bad. Many of the roads are impassable. The pressure on public representatives in Limerick on any issue has never been as severe as it has been on this issue in the last two months. I have visited many of these roads and their condition is in crisis. Would the Government recognise this and give Limerick County Council emergency funding to try to improve matters?

Currently, £4 million is needed for a holding operation, to maintain the roads in the condition they were in mid-1993; that is the minimum we would require. Our funding for roads has been maintained for 1994. The council's funding of £1.08 million is identical to the 1993 funding despite extra expenses on the council. The national grant for 1993 was substantially down on the 1992 figure, from £2.55 million to £2.38 million. We ask the Minister to take this into consideration when allocating the national grant for 1994.

The rates support grant for 1994 was increased by £114,000. The council has had to take on obligations imposed by the Government costing over £1 million. These are items of increased expenditure the Government decided the council should pay. However, the Government did not provide the funding. The sum of £114,000 is totally inadequate for the extra obligations imposed.

The expenditures the council had to meet over and above the previous year include the cost of the Programme for Economic and Social Progress— £300,000; the special increases to general operatives of £250,000; our contribution to the regional authority which will be £25,000; changes in higher education grants which will cost £50,000; the introduction of sections of the Health and Safety Act costing £50,000; the European Union directive on sludge disposal costing £40,000; Clean Up Ireland week costing £20,000; the implementation of the Workers Protection Act which costs £40,000; the extension of the Abattoirs Act costing £50,000 and increased payments of £213,000 for services the council introduced through capital expenditure over the previous year. That is a total extra cost of £1.018 million to the council and the council received £114,000 to meet this expenditure. This has put the council under enormous pressure but despite this, it has managed to maintain its section of the funding over 1993 in the 1994 Estimates.

I also wish to raise the area of funding of our council. If the rates had not been removed, our income from them would have been £20.6 million. However, our grant allocation was £5.79 million in 1993 which left a shortfall of £14.8 million. I understand there was a loan grant of £2 million given at a certain stage. When that amount is deducted, the council is approximately £12.8 million short of its rate figure for expenditure, which would obviously make an enormous difference.

I wish to briefly refer again to the state of the roads. I have travelled on roads that some older people cannot travel or children cannot cycle to school on because they are too dangerous. We are asking the Government to provide emergency funding but there should also be ongoing funding. A former EU Commissioner, Ray MacSharry, suggested that 10 per cent of Structural Funds should go to regional and county roads.

The retention of part of the road tax within the counties should also be examined. A percentage — 50 or 30 per cent — of the road tax collected in each county should be dedicated towards regional and county roads as a way of overcoming the problem in the long term. This problem will only get worse if we do not ensure that it does not arise year after year. If something is not done immediately, I shudder to think of the reaction all parties will get when asking for votes in the European and local elections.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment (Mr. Stagg)

I know County Limerick is well managed at local level, and this is also a compliment to the elected representatives. However, I am not briefed today to deal with the generality of local authority financing. That is a debate for another day.

Members of local authorities and public representatives generally should be aware that the demand for devolution of authority to the local authorities from the centre carries responsibilities with it. One cannot have devolution without decision and a need at local level to raise funding to operate that devolution. One cannot have one without the other. There is currently a big debate on this matter and Senator Neville touched on it.

I thank Senator Neville for raising this important issue. I can assure him that the Government share his concern that our regional and county roads should be maintained in a satisfactory condition so as to fulfil their transport functions. In comparison with other member states of the EU, Ireland has a most extensive system of public roads. In fact, our length of road per thousand of population is at the upper end of the scale at 26 kilometres; almost twice that of Belgium, Denmark and France. The corresponding figures for Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the former West Germany are in the range of five to eight kilometres per thousand.

These figures serve to illustrate the challenge we face in maintaining these roads in an acceptable condition and we cannot afford to ignore this challenge. Regional and county roads represent almost 92 per cent of our road network and account for 47 per cent of the traffic carried. They serve a vital role in relation to local economies and cater for agriculture, forestry, tourism and aquaculture as well as serving important social functions.

As the Senator knows, responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of these roads rests with the county councils. It is for them to finance the necessary works from their own resources, supplemented by the discretionary grants provided annually by my Department. However, the Government is prepared to play its part in helping councils perform their functions in this area. An indication of our intent was a commitment given in 1989 to make available £150 million for work on regional and county roads over the period 1989-91 in response to the poor conditions of many of these roads at that time. In the event, grants paid to councils totalled £182 million while a further £132 million was provided to them as discretionary grants in 1992 and 1993.

The Government has also sought to cater for non-national roads generally under the National Development Plan. A substantially increased provision for the improvement of these roads has been proposed in the plan with a total investment of £475 million over the period 1994-99 from Exchequer and EU resources. Additional funding will be provided for maintenance work.

It is clear to me from my visits to councils around the country that the condition of roads in many areas has disimproved as a result of the bad weather conditions and the flooding which occurred last year, notably in June, October and again in December. Before the full impact of the heavy rainfall in December was apparent, I secured total grants of £86.9 million for the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads in the 1994 Estimates, an increase of £11.6 million on last year and in line with the National Development Plan.

As announced in the budget, an additional £15 million is being made available for the maintenance of these roads using receipts from the Government's tax amnesty so as to further assist local authorities in dealing with weather related damage. Overall, £101.9 million will be provided in grants to local authorities this year to supplement expenditure from their own resources in respect of their responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads, an increase of £26.6 million or over 35 per cent on last year's grants.

I expect local authorities to at least maintain their level of expenditure — I am pleased to hear Limerick County Council is doing so — on these roads so that maximum benefits can be realised from the additional funding which will be available from my Department. I intend to allocate some of this provision to local authorities as specific grants for individual road improvement projects put forward by the authorities and which have a significant and quantifiable economic impact, particularly as regards employment and on industry, tourism, agriculture and rural development. The payments are, however, expected to qualify for aid from the EU and the projects selected will accordingly have to satisfy the EU's requirements. The balance will be allocated as discretionary grants to meet the cost of maintenance and improvement works selected by local authorities in line with the practice followed in recent years.

I will take account of the situation in Limerick when determining the level of discretionary grants and the reallocation of specific grants for individual improvement projects which I hope to finalise shortly.

Mr. Neville

The allocation of £15 million, when broken down over 26 counties, is approximately £0.5 million per county. This will have little impact on the problem which has developed over the past few months.

Mr. Stagg

An additional £0.5 million to last year's allocation is more than £0.5 million per county, irrespective of their number. It is at least £1 million per county.