Trevor Sargent
Ceist:158 Mr. Sargent asked the Minister for the Environment the cost of the recently published roads bulletin; and the reason the money was not spent on the upgrading of roads.
Written Answers. - Roads Bulletin Cost.
The cost of the bulletin was £19,247, including VAT of £1,657. While the cost was met from the administrative budget provision of my Department's Vote, rather than from the provision for roads, the sum involved represents about 0.005 per cent of the Department's expenditure on roads and related services last year.
It seems to me to be essential that information about the manner in which the overall sum of more than £400 million allocated to road works is being used should be freely and widely available, and that the public should have easy access to information on the legal, technical and financial issues that arise. The new bulletin is designed to meet objectives such as these, and it will be published periodically by my Department and distributed widely.
The practice of publishing regular bulletins dealing with statistical matters and other developments is well established in my Department and efforts have been made in recent times to improve both the content and the quality of Departmental publications generally. I intend that the roads programme, which has not been well served in this regard until now, will in future be dealt with in the same way as other services have been.