Government to allocate €500m for secondary roads

A RECORD budget of around €500 million for our secondary roads will be announced by Environment Minister Dick Roche today.

The exact amount and breakdown of the allocation will be detailed by Mr Roche in his home county of Wicklow.

However, Labour believes the €500 million allocation to our secondary roads next year is not enough given the high level of motor taxes the public is being charged.

“Most of our accidents occur on these roads and while a lot of attention is given to drink and speeding as causes of accidents, the poor conditions of our secondary roads are also major contributors,” Labour’s Environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore said.

With the increase in one-off rural housing, the demand for better paved secondary roads will increase and the Government will have to address it, Mr Gilmore added.

But he said the spending of the non-national roads budget should stay with local authorities. “The National Roads Authority manages the budget for major roads and I am not too convinced that they have always spent this wisely,” Mr Gilmore said.

Green Party Transport spokesman Eamon Ryan echoed this view. “The National Roads Authority is actually building a lot of motorways that are too big for our needs and in this way they are wasting a lot of public money,” Mr Ryan said.

It would make more sense to spend more money on making many of the accident blackspots on our non-national roads safer, the Green Party Transport spokesman added.

“We will actually spend more on our roads than building up our public transport system this year and that is a shame,” Deputy Ryan said.