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Road Maintenance

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 14 March 2013

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Questions (145)

Robert Dowds

Question:

145. Deputy Robert Dowds asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the reason South Dublin County Council received a lower amount of funding than Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council under the local and regional road maintenance initiative, despite the fact that south Dublin is geographically larger than Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13464/13]

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Written answers

The improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads in its area, is a statutory function of each road authority in accordance with the provisions of section 13 of the Roads Act, 1993. Works on such roads are a matter for the relevant local authority to be funded from its own resources supplemented by State road grants. 

As you know I recently announced additional funding of €2.7 million under a road maintenance initiative for road drainage schemes.  In determining the annual non-national road grant allocations, the overall objective is to resource each local authority appropriately in as fair and equitable a manner as is possible, and using the established methodology which is applied to all local authority areas.

These additional grants, over and above the amounts announced by me in January last, were provided to assist local authorities with the urgent maintenance and upkeep of roads in their respective administrative areas.  As there tends to be  higher costs per kilometre  in urban Council areas than in rural ones, these allocations are based on 'adjusted' road lengths.  

Since a large part of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Council area comprises the highly built-up former Borough of Dun Laoghaire, it merits a factor of 2 (twice the road length) while the slightly less densly populated South Dublin County Council and also Fingal County Council have a factor of 1.5 (one and a half times the road length). Based on this methodology (which has been in use for some years), Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council was grant aided in the amount of €38,988 while South Dublin County Council was provided with €35,534, a difference of €3,454.

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