Maintaining our roads - Assessing spend on roadworks

THOUGH those living in the Shannon catchment and in south Galway bore the brunt of the recent flooding crisis, secondary roads, and some urban ones too, already a patchwork of the most basic repairs and potholes because of years of underfunding and neglect, deteriorated further.

In some instances barely passable roads became dangerous.

A review by the Department of Transport found that maintenance funding for national roads in Cork and Galway cities fell by 85% between 2010 and 2014. From 2010 Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford city councils were no longer responsible for the maintenance of any national roads, though Cork and Galway councils were.

These two authorities continued to maintain the national road network under their remit, despite a spectacular reduction in the funding provided for this purpose.

The report also found that some local authorities say staffing shortages have limited their capacity to carry out essential road maintenance.

The department admits it could not accurately measure the effectiveness of the millions it invests in road maintenance each year but concluded that the programme was “reasonably effective”.

This seems an assessment based on hope rather than authorative analysis and hardly seems good enough for a bureaucracy responsible for spending hundreds of millions each year.

Have we not learnt how unwise and dangerous ineffective oversight can be?