Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 9 Mar 1995

Vol. 142 No. 6

Adjournment Matters. - County Limerick Roads.

Mr. Neville

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Fitzgerald, to the House and thank her for taking this Adjournment Matter. The Coalition Government has paid special attention to problems in rural Ireland and to rural renewal. The Minister of State, Deputy Carey, initiated pilot studies in co-operation with services in rural areas as a prerequisite to halting the departure of services. The Minister of State, Deputy Deenihan, is also doing excellent work in the Leader II programme.

In County Limerick this work is being overshadowed by an issue of immediate importance — the critical state of county roads. In some places county roads have disappeared and areas of the county are almost inaccessible. We can have all the programmes and initiatives to improve rural Ireland but if people do not have access to their houses, they are not interested regardless of how welcome and beneficial they may be. People want to be able to get to their homes, travel to their place of work and to their local village. I ask the Minister to treat this as a matter of urgency and increase the grant for county roads by a substantial amount in the current year. The increase should be in the region of £1 million which is equal to the amount provided by Limerick County Council for 1995 in excess of the 1994 figures.

It is difficult to express how bad the situation is in County Limerick. Road conditions are the worst in living memory. Many roads are completely impassable and dangerous and this has resulted in accidents. Damage to vehicles is a regular occurrence. If this were costed the figure would run into several hundreds of thousands of pounds. There are many rural areas where it is dangerous to walk on the roads; cycling is impossible; elderly people are isolated in their homes and children take their lives in their hands travelling to school and to school bus pick-up points. One must express concern about accessibility for the emergency services in certain areas and delays that may be caused to ambulances, the fire brigade or other services.

The winter of 1994-95 has been one of the wettest in decades in our area. The rain has washed away the surface and in many areas removed even the foundations of the roads. On 7 and 8 December last 25.5 millimetres of rainfall was recorded at the Shannon Airport weather station. Extraordinary rainfall was experienced on 26 January 1995 when 24.6 millimetres was recorded and on 27 January 1995 when the figure was 32.8 millimetres. Monthly recorded rainfall at Shannon Airport for December 1994 was 181.1 millimetres compared with the normal figure of 106 millimetres, an increase of 70.8 per cent.

The recorded figure for January 1995 was 190.2 millimetres against the normal rainfall for the month of 93 millimetres, an increase of 205 per cent, more than double the average rainfall. The figure for February 1995 at Shannon Airport was 156.8 millimetres; the normal level of rainfall is 63 millimetres. The increase for February 1995 is 249 per cent, almost two and a half times the average.

It has been an incredible winter and has had an enormous effect on the roads. High rainfall was also experienced last winter: December 1993 saw 217.6 millimetres, January 1994 saw 164.8 millimetres and February 1994 saw 111.6 millimetres. We have had an accumulation of damage from weather over two winters. The unprecedented level of rainfall has destroyed the condition of the roads and we have an emergency as a result. The Government must acknowledge the crisis and assist the council in providing special funding in 1995 to make roads passable to many areas of our county.

County Limerick has the highest intensity of milk production in the country resulting in the highest volume of the type of traffic which causes most damage. Dairying is the life blood of the economic activity of our county; the county depends on the production of milk for the livelihood of many of its people, those on and off the farm. Milk must be collected and transported to the co-operatives; County Limerick supplies 10 per cent or 110 million gallons of the 1,100 million gallons of the national milk quota — the highest intensity of any county. It is heavy vehicles such as bulk tankers, lorries, tractors and silage machinery, and not cars which affect the condition of our roads. The impact on a road of a ten tonne lorry is equal to that of 10,000 cars.

In essence, the level of service to agricultural activity is the measure of service which the roads are expected to provide. A significant case can be made to the Government for funding for county roads. The co-operative creameries pay a substantial amount in road tax for commercial vehicles around the country. The largest percentage of this is paid outside County Limerick because most of our co-operatives are outside the county. County Limerick collected in excess of £8 million in car tax in 1994. In a crisis the Department of the Environment must recognise the special circumstances prevailing in County Limerick and increase substantially the allocation to our regional roads over and above its allocation.

One may ask what the county council is doing. Limerick County Council is increasing its own contribution by more than £1 million. All members of the council from all parties agreed to take the hard decisions at estimates time. It is an indication of the level of deterioration of the roads that prior to the floods of this winter and the consequent damage, the members of Limerick County Council decided to substantially increase the charges and rates to deal with the problem. I request the Minister to substantially increase the Government's contribution from Central Funds.

The county manager has estimated that to bring the roads to an acceptable level — the level they were at in the 1970s — would cost about £23 million. We are not asking for that; we want it over a period of years. If rates had not been removed the council's income for 1994 would have been in the region of £7.4 million. The deterioration in county roads has been happening since the discretion was taken away from councils to collect money. All Governments since 1977 have a responsibility in this matter.

I entreat the Minister of State to communicate to the Minister for the Environment, and the Government, the message that we in County Limerick need urgent action. We want our unique situation to be recognised. All the political parties in the county are united in one voice. We asked the last Government and we were disappointed; we are asking this Government and we do not want to be disappointed again. We ask the Minister of State to convey to the Minister, Deputy Howlin, our absolute frustration. I will be going to a meeting about roads tonight and I expect it will be attended by hundreds. That is an indication of people's concern.

I wish, if I may, to give my remaining time to Senator Naughten.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Roche)

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Mr. Naughten

I join Senator Neville in requesting additional funding for our county roads. The problem of our county roads has been with us for many years and has arisen as a result of the removal of domestic rates on houses in 1977. Up to that time local authorities had the capacity to raise the funding they needed to provide a level of service which they required within their county. We had the power, if we needed additional funding, to increase the rates. Since the removal of domestic rates in 1977 our rates support grant has fallen annually and has not met the level we need for the services.

Many of the county roads in rural Ireland are the life blood of the community; whether for the milk supplier, the machinery contractor or those who have to earn a living in milk or beef production, they must have a road to earn their income. It is vital for them to have a road to transport their product, be it milk or beef, to the market and to get in feed or silage machinery.

The vast majority of our county roads have not changed since they were built 100 or 150 years ago. Until the 1950s the means of transport was horses and carts. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, we have had a complete change in the style of farming over the past 40 years. We now have heavy machinery involved, such as slurry tanks, silage machinery or milk lorries, and the roads are not able to carry the weight. As a result, the roads are breaking down; the surface has gone and we cannot get sufficient funding from central Government to resurface them.

This is not just a problem in my county of Roscommon, but in the west as a whole. A substantially increased level of funding will have to be provided to maintain a reasonable road standard, and a reasonable standard of life for those using the roads. Senator Neville clearly pointed out that whether it is the children going to school or people going to mass or going about their daily work, they are not able to travel on some of the roads. The flooding has caused problems this year and has put a high cost on local authorities in trying to alleviate it and improve services but the problem has been there for the past few years and unless we get substantial additional funding for the county roads it will not be tackled.

Our local authority has increased the amount of money we raise. We have increased our water charges substantially this year and they are now running in excess of what water is costing in order to meet the shortfall on the county roads funding. We have introduced this year for the first time a sewerage charge and privatised refuse collection, and that has saved us money. Nevertheless, we are only scratching the surface of the problem. We need additional funding. If that funding has to come by way of additional taxation, so be it. The road structure will have to be repaired and built up. If not the people will not be able to live in rural Ireland. The dwindling population of the west will decline further if we are not able to maintain a proper road structure there.

Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise and Employment (Ms E. Fitzgerald)

As Senators know, I was very pleased to be able to negotiate a substantial amount of funding for county roads as part of the Structural Funds. State funding for non-national roads is now provided generally by way of annual discretionary grants to local authorities and grants under this European Union co-finance scheme for specific road improvement projects which promote employment and economic activity. In order to qualify for grants for county roads under the latter scheme, projects must have a significant and quantifiable economic impact, particularly as regards employment and on industrial, tourism, fisheries, forestry, agricultural and rural development. As I have said before in this House, that scheme is not designed to fill our favourite pothole; it is about roads that lead to jobs. Senator Neville has made the point that many of the roads in County Limerick have jobs at the end of them in terms of agriculture, the food industry and so on.

Proposals received from Limerick County Council and local authorities generally for funding in 1995 were assessed having regard to their individual merits and for compliance with the European Commission approved criteria applying to the grant scheme. The non-national road grant allocations notified earlier this week by the Minister to Limerick County Council include grants totalling £1,169,000 for eight specific improvement projects which will contribute to economic development in the area, particularly in the industrial, tourism and forestry sectors.

In addition, discretionary grants totalling £2,054,000 have been allocated to Limerick County Council this year. Included is a supplementary improvement grant of £250,000 in recognition of the poor state of roads in the county. This allocation is over and above the normal discretionary grants and is confined to a number of county councils experiencing difficulty in maintaining regional and local roads up to an acceptable standard. That is concrete recognition by the Department of the specific problems of County Limerick to which Senator Neville adverted.

It is now a matter for Limerick County Council to determine how best to use these grants and its own resources provision, including the programme of works to be undertaken to repair roads damaged by the recent storms and flooding. I am glad to see that Limerick County Council are putting £1 million extra of their own money into this project because the Government funding for county roads is meant to supplement money spent at local level. I know the Minister for the Environment is concerned to give money to those local authorities that are prepared to put their own money where their mouth is as well, and I am glad to hear that from Limerick County Council.

Special grants are not provided for repairs arising from poor weather. In line with established practice, local authorities are advised to reserve as a contingency fund a proportion of their discretionary grants for this purpose. The Minister has secured additional funding for non-national roads in the budget including £4 million as an immediate response to the poor condition of these roads which have been aggravated by the recent weather. We all recognise that this past winter has been particularly appalling and that the bad weather and flooding have damaged the road system. The discretionary grant allocations notified to Limerick County Council earlier this week incorporate the council's share of this specific budget provision.

The overall 1995 provision for non-national roads is £103 million. This may on the face of it appear to compare unfavourably with expenditure in this area last year which totalled £107 million but last year's money included an exceptional £15 million out of the amnesty for the maintenance of non-national roads by county councils and a supplementary block grant of £5 million provided in May 1994 for maintenance of county roads. In the case of the £15 million the source of funding, the tax amnesty, was accepted to be a once off benefit to the Exchequer. When this exceptional provision is excluded, the 1995 provision for county roads is 12 per cent higher than the underlying 1994 figure and considerably higher still than the funding provided for these roads in any previous year. I believe a very serious effort is being made by the Government to address the problem of the county roads.

The statutory responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads lies with local authorities, as is the primary obligation in relation to providing sufficient resources for roadworks. Government action alone cannot resolve the problem of unsatisfactory road conditions. There is a need for local authorities generally to face up to their statutory responsibilities for these roads and to make realistic provision from their own resources for maintenance and improvement works. I am encouraged by the practical steps taken in this regard by Limerick County Council which has spent more than £2 million from its own resources on these roads this year, an increase of almost £770,000 on the council's expenditure in 1994.

In spite of increasing State support over the years, the Minister for the Environment is fully aware that many roads are in an unsatisfactory state and have further deteriorated as a result of the severe weather in recent times. For this reason the Department of the Environment is undertaking a comprehensive review of the non-national roads. This review will address funding issues in detail and its findings will form the basis of future action by the Government in devising and implementing the best strategy which, in co-operation with the local authorities, will bring the non-national roads network up to a standard that people deserve.

As has been emphasised by the previous Minister, Deputy Smith, on many occasions, it is important when spending money on county roads that we do not simply engage in surface dressing but that the job is done properly and will last. It is not about filling pot holes; it is about improvements to the road network, using this very substantial amount of public money, and ensuring that they stand the test of time. That is important.