Dempsey: Councils are skimping on road spending

TOWN and county councils are skimping on investment in their local roads, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey claimed.

The minister yesterday announced a record 618 million to be spent on the upkeep and improvement of local and regional routes this year.

But he hit out at local authorities for their over-reliance on his department for funds, stating the primary responsibility for non-national roads lay locally.

“State grants are a supplement to expenditure by the local authorities. All authorities need to maintain and even increase their own expenditure on their road networks,” he said.

Mr Dempsey said, ideally, local authorities would fund 30% of secondary road costs but he would be satisfied in the short-term if they exceeded a 20% contribution.

He warned a gathering in Athlone that he would be considering how councils measured up to this requirement when he allocated the next round of funds in 2009.

Among those he singled out for failing to pull their weight were Athlone Town Council and Longford County Council. He was criticised in turn by councillors from the area for leaving the area short of funds for roads previously.

This is the first year that the Department of Transport has control of the local and regional roads budget which previously came under the remit of the Department of the Environment. Last year’s budget was €607m.

The biggest single spending category in this year’s allocation is pavement improvement and maintenance which accounts for €310m, compared to €188m for road improvement schemes.

Safety is also a big feature of the package, with €8.5m going to address accident blackspots and €7.5m to improve often sparse, outdated and misleading regional road signposting.

Mr Dempsey said he had deliberately put an emphasis on road safety. “94% of the country’s roads are regional or local. They carry about 60% of all road traffic and 40% of all goods traffic.”

The minister’s remarks about funding responsibilities are likely to cause consternation in local council chambers around the country. His spokeswoman said, however, there would be a “period of engagement” with the local authorities to flesh out how they could increase their contributions.

As Ireland’s largest county Cork receives the biggest overall allocation this year with €65m going to roads in the county council area and a further €7.5m for the city with small additional amounts for councils.

Dublin city and the three county councils receive a total of €44.8m.