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.