The improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads is a statutory function of each road authority in accordance with the provisions of section 13 of the Roads Act 1993. The carrying out of works on these roads is a matter for the relevant local authority to be funded from its own resources supplemented by State road grants. The initial selection and prioritisation of projects to be funded is also a matter for the local authority.
Local authorities may submit applications for funding projects to eliminate accident blackspots, under my Department's Low Cost Safety Improvement Works scheme of grants for regional and local roads. This scheme of grants was introduced in 2000 as an extension of the scheme operated on national roads under the auspices of the National Roads Authority (NRA).
The NRA assesses applications for grant assistance under the scheme on behalf of my Department. The criteria for grant approval are based on accident data, inspection of sites, locations showing demonstrable hazard and discussions between the local authority and the NRA.
When Exchequer grants for regional and local roads are allocated each year, my Department does not hold back a reserve allocation, at central level, to deal with weather contingencies such as flooding. Holding back such an allocation would mean a reduction in the road grant allocations made to all local authorities at the beginning of each year.
The allocations made to local authorities are inclusive of a weather risk factor. Local authorities are expressly advised in the annual road grants circular letter that they should set aside contingency sums from their overall regional and local roads resources to finance necessary weather related works.
My Department would be prepared to consider, sympathetically, any request from local authorities to adjust their multi-annual restoration programmes or revise their specific grant applications, in order to prioritise work in 2010 necessitated by the recent flooding.
Local authorities are still assessing the extent of flood damage in their regions. Because these assessments cannot be completed until the flooding subsides, I expect that it will take some time before all the authorities concerned can quantify the damage sustained by their regional and local road networks and cost repair work.