Dara Calleary
Ceist:106. Deputy Dara Calleary asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the amount of funding that is available to improve road networks in 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8556/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraTuesday, 19 February 2013
Ceisteanna (106, 132, 158, 168, 180, 801, 802)
Jim Daly
Ceist:132. Deputy Jim Daly asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his views on the preventative measures being implemented by local authorities to preserve the condition of the network of rural roads that are being eroded to dirt tracks across the country; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8384/13]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Bernard Durkan
Ceist:158. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the extent to which he has had discussions with or received submissions from the various local authorities in connection with proposals to address the issue of local and county road deterioration arising from the prolonged wet and wintery weather conditions; the extent to which he has managed to provide funding to address this issue; if he has received any priority lists for such works; the extent to which he has responded to any such requests; if this adequately meets the demand; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8465/13]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Charlie McConalogue
Ceist:168. Deputy Charlie McConalogue asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the amount that will be invested in our national roads network in 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8546/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraJim Daly
Ceist:180. Deputy Jim Daly asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will review the current policy that operates within local authorities whereby rural roads are repaired as they are eroded by the current weather cycles and never maintained to prevent this erosion. [8385/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraBernard Durkan
Ceist:801. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the extent to which he has received submissions from the various local authorities in connection with urgently required road restoration works arising from winter weather condition damage to the local road network in urban and rural areas; the extent to which he can make available the necessary finance to meet such requirements; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8902/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraBernard Durkan
Ceist:802. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the extent to which he has received a priority lists in respect of road improvements-restorations from the local authorities in County Kildare with particular reference to addressing this issue arising from winter weather damage to the road network; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8903/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraFreagraí ó Béal (18 píosaí cainte)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 106, 132, 158, 168, 180, 801 and 802 together. It is almost like Taoiseach's questions, with all of the questions being taken together.
These questions relate to the maintenance and repair of the network of national, regional and local roads. The protection of the existing investment in the Irish national, regional and local roads network is the first priority of the Department’s expenditure on roads. Exchequer-funded roads improvements, where they occur, will focus on safety works or access to industrial estates and similar facilities.
As Deputies will be aware, Ireland has an extensive road network. The network consists of approximately 98,000 km of road which represents two and a half times the EU average in terms of kilometres per head of population. We have a lot of roads for our population. Obviously, the maintenance and improvement of this extensive network of roads places a substantial financial burden on local authorities and on the Exchequer.
Given the financial position that this Government inherited from the previous Fianna Fáil-led Government, there have been very large reductions in roads expenditure over the past number of years, and there will be further reductions in the future.
From a peak in 2007, when there were grants of €363 million towards the maintenance and restoration of national, regional and local roads, this has fallen to €232 million in 2013. On the other hand, the output we are achieving for the available funding is being improved by the use of new technology and initiatives. While these are significant reductions in expenditure, it is worth noting that neither of the two main Opposition parties provided for increased roads spending in their pre-budget submissions, which they published last December, so neither can credibly call for more spending on roads this year.
Over €52 million has been allocated by the NRA to local authorities for minor realignment upgrade projects and road pavement improvement works on national roads across the country in 2013. Construction work will continue on 17 schemes this year, selected by the NRA under its work programme and a further 25 projects are being brought through the planning process.
As regards regional and local roads it is important to note that the role of Exchequer grants in this area is to supplement the local authorities' spending in this area. The contribution made by individual local authorities, which are after all the roads authorities in law, has fallen in recent years both in real and percentage terms. In 2008, local authorities contributed €406 million towards expenditure on their own regional and local roads representing 40% of total spend; this had fallen to an estimated €175 million or 32% by last year. There is considerable disparity between what individual local authorities will contribute from their own resources towards roads, with some local authorities contributing as little as 8% to the total cost of road maintenance and restoration, while others provide more than two thirds of total funding from their own funds.
It is most disingenuous for some local authorities to complain about reductions in Government grants when they have reduced their own contribution by a greater proportion or make little contribution at all. From my Department’s perspective, regional and local roads funding has been directed towards the maintenance and repair of regional and local roads, and low cost safety works. This will remain the position in coming years and, unfortunately, this will have implications for the development of new roads schemes.
Furthermore, I am aware that many local authorities have expressed a desire to have greater flexibility in the manner in which they expend their allocations. My Department is open to such suggestions provided it is done in a prudent fashion and can be clearly measured.
I will call the Deputies who have tabled questions, starting with Deputy Jim Daly and then Deputy Dooley.
I thank the Minister for his response. I wish to bring a couple of issues to the Minister's attention. First, I acknowledge his efforts and those of his Department last year to rebalance the allocation to Cork County Council, which has the single largest road network in Ireland. Despite our calls in previous years to have such a rebalance undertaken, it was brought about last year. I wish to thank the Minister and his Department for that.
Is the Minister willing for his Department to be more flexible in the allocation of funding and to allow councils more flexibility in how moneys are allocated? In west Cork, a lot of money is going into the regional and national road networks, but very little into local and tertiary roads. Further discretion should be allowed to local area offices. Is the Minister willing for his Department to engage in that process?
Is the Minister aware that in some councils, to which his Department is allocating tens of millions of euro, payroll costs account for up to 62% of the moneys involved? I have analysed this matter and private contractors tell me that their payroll costs are in the region of 18% to 20%. Is the Minister aware of this information and, if so, will he comment on it?
I am very much open to providing more flexibility to local authorities, thus allowing them to move funds from one heading to another. My Department has received a proposal from one local authority and my officials are due to meet with the City and County Managers' Association to see if that can be progressed in the coming weeks. However, I want to be sure that the money actually goes into roads and does not end up being diverted into something else.
While it might be tempting to use all the money to patch up potholes, thus fixing the roads for a few months or a year, that is not the best way to do it long-term. We do need to strengthen the roads and restore them so that they can last for ten or 20 years. We want to be sure that does happen.
There is a new pilot scheme which the Minister of State, Deputy Kelly, has devised and is heading up with county managers. It is a new community involvement scheme and local authorities will be able to bid for funds for that quite soon.
Flexibility is something the Government wants to assist local authorities with and allow them to do, provided it can be sure the money goes into roads and the work done is measured.
I wish to call Deputy Dooley and offer my apologies, as I was not aware the Deputy had nominated Deputy Calleary's question.
That is understandable, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, in light of the number of Fine Gael Deputies who have tabled parliamentary questions today. They clearly do not hold parliamentary party meetings at which they get an opportunity to ask the Minister behind closed doors. Nevertheless, it is good to see they have an interest and are assisting the Minister-----
It is because there are so many.
They are assisting the Minister in his efforts to lobby for a greater slice of the budget. Members received a small history lesson from the Minister on the difficulty he faces based on who caused all the problems. He then suggested that somehow the county councils should provide more money. Never having served on a county council but having a keen understanding of what goes on there, I remind the Minister they are under significant pressure. Their other income streams are severely curtailed, including development levies, which would have provided them with moneys in the past. Similarly, they are finding it very difficult to collect rates and there have been significant reductions to the block grant. Consequently, it is disingenuous to somehow suggest it is a devolved responsibility the local authority should find the methodology to resolve.
The Minister must fight his case much more vociferously when it comes to the next round of Estimates. I also suggest that Ireland is in a different financial position in light of the Government's negotiation with the ECB. The Government has trumpeted the fact that an additional €1 billion is available this year. The Minister of State, Deputy Kelly, can confirm the Tánaiste was clear yesterday when he indicated the deal that was done of course would have an impact on budgetary measures. I argue that an appropriate and sufficient road network is an integral part of the recovery of the State. As the Minister is aware, it has a stimulus effect in the construction sector through the provision and creation of jobs but more particularly in the continued effort to make roads and the driving and passage thereon more safe. There has been a blip in this regard in recent days and weeks and while I do not wish to characterise this in any way as having been as a result of changes in road patterns or profiles, it reminds Members of the necessity for a continuous focus on road safety.
Thank you Deputy.
The improvement on the road network has led in no small way to the lack of deaths on the road. It would be a highly retrograde step if we were to allow the road network to deteriorate back to its former state and the only way one can avoid this is by continuing to invest in it and to not allow the state of the surface revert to the position it reached in the past. More money is now available to the Government as a result of the €1 billion that has been saved and the Minister should make his pitch for whatever amount of that he can ultimately achieve. The Minister's own quiet way of negotiation could and hopefully will lead to success in that regard.
Deputy Dooley makes a valid point in stating that local authorities are under pressure and I fully acknowledge that. Central government also is under a lot of pressure and I find it a little disingenuous of local authorities to point the finger at central government, which perhaps has cut its allocation by 20% or 30%, when the local authorities actually have cut their own by 60%. It is interesting to observe the wide variation among local authorities in quite similar counties as to how much they do or do not put into roads. It also is important to bear in mind that 85% of motor tax goes to local authorities, some of it through my Department, which must be spent on roads and some through the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, which they are not obliged to spend on roads. It is interesting to see how little of the latter local authorities choose to spend on roads.
As for the €1 billion, that amount is being saved every year for at least the next ten years as a result of the elimination of the promissory notes. That is €1 billion less that the Government must borrow and not €1 billion more that the Government has to spend. There is a very big difference and I would hate to see this country revert so quickly to that Charlie McCreevy way of thinking. His way of thinking, which is the reason we are in this current mess, is "When I have it, I spend it". However, the Government does not want to be in a position whereby it states that as it is not obliged to borrow it, it will spend it. It is too soon to talk about the next budget, as there are a lot of moving parts. For example, Departments overspent by €1 billion last year and were that to happen again, the aforementioned €1 billion will have been eliminated. The Government must achieve €300 million in savings targets from the Croke Park extension alone this year. In addition, the Government does not know whether the growth targets will be achieved this year. Consequently, it is too soon to start spending that billion euro at this point.
However, if money or a capital stimulus becomes available, I have many projects that are ready and the ones I can move on the quickest relate to road maintenance and minor works. I heard Jack O'Connor, one of the SIPTU leaders, talking earlier about a public private partnership or off balance sheet stimulus. That would be attractive but anyone who has been involved in a PPP knows it takes two to four years to bring them to fruition by the time a consortium is brought together and so on. We need a stimulus now or next year, not in four year's time and that is why I would prefer an Exchequer stimulus rather than an off balance sheet stimulus, but that is contingent on the budgetary position looking better at the end of the year and it is too soon to start considering that now.
I accept the Minister's point but the Government will have to borrow €1 billion less. The Estimates and the budget were prepared on the basis of the capacity the Government had to borrow. The Government should borrow that €1 billion because it will form part of what the Minister's colleague's friend, Jack O'Connor, has been saying. I listened with interest to him earlier. While he believes our capacity to borrow on the markets has improved, I am not sure the Government will be able to borrow to the extent that the Labour Party's friends in the unions seem to suggest. They mentioned €7 billion or €8 billion using a multiplier effect. Perhaps we will hear more detail from Mr. O'Connor and the Labour Party in the coming weeks about how that will work. However, I would support a targeted and well thought out stimulus programme within our overall budgetary framework. The deal the Government has done provides that and, therefore, the Minister must fight for his portion of that to deal with road maintenance. There are new projects that would be nice to start but let us try to maintain what we have in the interim. Let us take out the bottlenecks on some regional and local roads, which are creating significant blockages and leading to road fatalities. Accidents will accumulate as a result. I urge the Minister to continue to fight for his portion of the funds in that regard.
It is wrong to suggest that many local authorities are cutting back proportionately more than the Department on projects. My experience is that Dublin City Council, DCC, is tailoring all projects as much it can, including roads projects.
I refer to the A5 project, which the Minister said would be funded in 2014. If money became available, is there any way that project could be considered? It is an important project for the north west and it would be the final piece in the jigsaw of linking up the road system, because there have been massive improvements.
With regard to local authority funding, ramps are also a major problem because many substandard ramps were built. Money was provided by the Department but there are a huge number of them throughout the State and should additional money become available, it could be used for this purpose. The DCC has to maintain so many of them that additional money is needed. I do not know whether new capital projects will come on stream this year but if so, a number of projects could be examined. Perhaps the Minister could elaborate on that, given he said that there might be flexibility.
In view of my constituency colleague's comments, I urge the Minister to examine how much can be borrowed and what can be done to stimulate the economy. It is unusual to hear Deputy Dooley refer to Jack O'Connor as the Labour Party's friend in view of his own party's close friendship with the social partners over a long period.
The Deputy is distancing himself from Mr. O'Connor already.
Not at all. When the Minister and the Government are establishing the limits of what can be done given the requirement to borrow €1 billion less, they will have to consult Fianna Fáil's friends - the IMF and the remaining members of the troika.
They are the only ones providing the Government with money at the moment.
With regard to Deputy Ellis's question, it is a fact that local authorities have cut their contribution by more than the Government's and I provided the figures in my reply. They used to provide 40% of the cost but that has fallen to 32%. Local authorities are, therefore, cutting their funding faster than the Government is cutting their grants.
If additional money becomes available, we could easily put another €100 million into road maintenance, €100 million into the small NRA schemes that I would like to go ahead with, and probably between €50 million and €100 million into new road, tourism and sports projects.
That is all we would be able to spend. I would love to receive further funding as it would be preferable to pursuing public private partnership projects which take two, three or four years to complete and do not provide good value in the long term. As I stated, it is not necessarily the case that €1 billion has become available. We must meet our growth targets and, unlike last year, all Departments must come in on budget and without an overspend this year. In addition, we must also deliver €300 million in savings, the figure under discussion in the Croke Park talks. Given that the €1 billion is not available to spend just yet, we should not go down that road.
Deputy Ellis is correct that a number of ramps, especially in Dublin, were badly constructed and are in very poor condition. Fingal County Council has been allocated €100,000 to address the issue, with similar amounts allocated to other counties. This funding will not be sufficient, however. If additional money was available, I would happily give it to the local authorities and they would happily receive it.
The Government has committed £25 million in 2015 and 2016, respectively, to the A5 road project. The elements of the project north of the Border are not proceeding owing to a judicial challenge. This matter must be dealt with and the project needs to start before we can offer more money.