Wexford councillor vows to write to Transport Minister once a week until ‘inherently unfair’ roads budget is revised
Wexford PeopleWexford councillors have vowed to write to Transport Minister Darragh O’Brien on a weekly basis until the model for funding roads repairs in the country is changed. In the wake of a response from the minister which was described as “disgraceful” councillors have once more called for a revision of the national roads budget.
Under the current system, funding is allocated to each local authority based on kilometre of road in the county. However, this does not take into account the condition of the roads in each county.
In an effort to address this, Councillor John Fleming submitted a motion at the June meeting of Wexford County Council (WCC) in which he asked the minister to “use a funding mechanism which takes account of previous funding allocations” and “the level of local investment in road maintenance from the council’s own resources”.
In response, Minister O’Brien’s private secretary penned a response to WCC in which he noted that an investment of €713m for regional and local roads across the State was announced in February of this year, an increase of 8 per cent on last year’s figure.
“The objective is to allocate funding to local authorities on as equitable a basis as possible taking the length of the road network into account. It is envisaged that grants will continue to be made available on that basis,” the response reads.
"Basing regional and local roads grant allocations on road conditions could result in an unequitable distribution of exchequer funding. For example, local authorities that allocate higher levels of (their) own resources funding to regional and local roads will have a larger proportion of roads with a higher condition rating than those with lower levels of own resources funding.”
"Basing allocations on road condition could therefore disincentivise local authorities from allocating own resources funding to roads maintenance.”
Of that €713m national budget for roads, WCC received €23.3m and, according to the minister’s office, that funding is intended to “supplement realistic contributions from local authorities’ own resources”.
This was met with disdain by Sinn Féin councillor Aoife Rose O’Brien who inferred that the only way to acquire extra funds for roads was to stop repairing them.
“He has basically stated he doesn’t want to financially support any local authority which topped up the gap in funding itself,” she said at the October meeting of WCC. “It seems we should totally neglect our roads if we want additional funding.”
Cllr O’Brien continued the discussion at the monthly meeting of the Rosslare Municipal District (RMD) two days later when she suggested striking up regular communication with Minister O’Brien.
“Is there anything we can do about the lack of roads funding?” she asked following news that WCC will not be receiving any supplementary budget for 2025. “I’m very conscious of the amount of work required in this district, do we keep writing to the minister, write to him once a week? Would that achieve anything?”
Cllr Lisa McDonald feared that all the letters in the world wouldn’t make any difference to a minister born and raised in the capital.
“We have submitted various motions which have gone to various minsters asking them to look at how the budget is divided and we have a Dublin minister now so it’s not going to change any time soon,” she said. “The current system is inherently unfair.
"The roads in Dublin and Cork and the urban areas get better and better because they have an unfair advantage on how the money is spent. Until it changes we’re going to continue to see the roads in rural Ireland struggling to keep up.”
Senior engineer for the RMD, Michael Brazzill, is the man charged with maintaining the some 605km of roads in the district and he agreed that the current method of funding is unfair.
“It’s based on the length of roads, but it should be based on the condition of the roads,” he said. “Our roads are in a poor condition when compared to those in Dublin and other counties, we should be receiving additional funding based on how poor our roads are.”
Cllr Jim Codd broke it down into mathematical terms.
“If you have 100km of the best of the roads, and you have, as we do, 100km of roads that are in bits, you’ll get the same amount of money for both,” he said. “Newly tarred roads get the same amount of money as the ones you couldn’t walk on. It’s the laziest equation possible. It’s chronic mismanagement of money.”
Unwilling to accept the response received from the minister, Cllr O’Brien suggested the RMD write a further letter demanding a more nuanced reply.
“I would be worried that any motions going forward will get a similar response from the department of transport, they just regurgitate the same answer, it’s just a copy and paste. I propose that we directly respond to the minister.”