Brendan Smith urges funding boost for non-national road network

Thank you very much and to my colleagues as well, I have a meeting at 10. Minister, I hope that there is not another spend on the capital side of your department's budget at this particular time. If there is, I would like to see a reallocation of funding for the non-national road network or region and county roads need more investment. Thankfully there is an increase in population in rural Ireland. So if there is funding available, I would sincerely hope it would be devoted to the non-national road network programme. Thank you. I will briefly summarise the expenditure profile for each programme. programme A in sustainable mobility, active travel and greenways, expenditure is £86 million, £572 million, compared to profile of £62.856 million, or 38% ahead of profile. programme B in public transport, taking EV and public transport, taking EV and EV infrastructure, GAN's first expenditure is £50.425 million, compared to profile of £63 million, or 12% behind profile. for heavy rail and public transport, for heavy rail and public transport, for heavy rail and public transport investment, expenditure is £165.856 million, compared to profile of £271.148 million, or 38% behind profile. programme C in programme C, road safety and road networks, expenditure is £402 million, compared to profile of £526 million, or 24% behind profile. In programme D, civil aviation, expenditure is on profile, with no expenditure scheduled to take place prior to quarter four. programme E, maritime transport and safety, expenditure is £1.311 million, compared to profile of £1.64 million, or 20% behind profile. For subheads with underspends, the reasons for variations between expenditure and profile are as follows. In the grants and infrastructure, the LEV grants provide funding towards several electric vehicle purchase grants, which are demand-led. In general, demand was lower than expected at this point of the year, due to global supply chain issues, impacting on the availability and delivery of new vehicles into the Irish market. The drawdown of funding for infrastructure has also been impacted by global supply chains. In addition, the launch of a scheme for apartments charging has been delayed, and was launched with zero emissions vehicles Ireland, Zevi on the 21st of July. In heavy rail safety and development, the underspend is predominantly due to reduction in spend on the Dart Plus feet, because of renegotiation of the timing of milestone payments, with a significant down payment made to Alstom in December last year, originally scheduled for this year. There is also a reduction in expenditure on new intercity railcars, due to an updated delivery schedule of 2023 for the majority of railcars. In the public transport infrastructure, the underspend is predominantly due to reduction in spend on ticketing, technology and integration, support and the bus programme. In the case of Bus Connect Dublin, there have been delays in delivery of new fleet. In the construction and development of national roads, some of the underspend is related to the timing of payments in relation to a significant project delay, as Road Bridge Limited went into receivership in March, leading to the N5 Ballard Dream to Scrum old project being suspended. Lastly, in regional roads, expenditure to end of August on projection and renewal of regional and local roads was close to profile, while expenditure on road improvement projects was behind profile. The shortfall in expenditure for road improvement projects is due largely to the impact of the road bridge receivership on the Kuna to Kilachene Distributor Road. The rest of the centre, I won't refer to you, but one thing I would make the point to the deputy, we will be, those underspends at this present time will be clawed back. We will not have an underspend, a significant underspend at the end of the year. There are a number of additional rail and public transport projects which we expect to deliver and spend on in this year, which will mean that those underspends will not actually accrue at the end of the year. Thank you. I thank the Minister for his detailed reply. You obviously negotiated very well in your estimates campaign last year, Minister. There is a very substantial spend there under each heading, and I sincerely hope that you will have an increased level of funding for the region and local roads, the non-national road network for the coming year. As we know, as I mentioned earlier, thankfully there is a growth in population in rural areas. My own county that is very rural, that has very little national road because of our border situation, and that we are very heavily dependent on the non-national road network for the siting of people's homes, and also for the siting of enterprise and business. So there is a lot of heavy traffic. We need to ensure that the roads that are up to a reasonable standard at the moment, that there is investment in those to protect the investment that was made over the years. And there are also many roads in both counties that are crying out for investment and upgrading. And Minister, in this day and age people are entitled to a proper standard of road to their home and to their place of work. And I would urge you, Minister, that if there is any leeway in any of the sub-heads that you consider allocating to local authorities, who have the capacity to spend more money before the end of this year, and to also ensure that there is an increased level of funding for 2023. Thank you, Alaskan Gorla. Thank you, Deputy. I absolutely agree with you. I think the key investment, one of the key investments we need to make, is the protection and renewal of existing assets. If you let a road go, as you know, it costs far more to bring it back in terms of, you know, when you get structural damage of potholes and so on, then so you are far better to invest now in maintaining the road surface, maintaining the network, maintaining the drains, and that actually saves you money in the long run. So we do have to make sure that that is protected, and it has been in recent budgets. The reality is we have so many different asks, as we heard earlier here, particularly in the likes of new services, connecting Ireland, new rail services, and we do have a real significant shift still to make. We are heading as a government towards a ratio of 2 to 1 expenditure on public transport to roads. We are not anywhere near that yet. And so the significant increases in transport spending to come are going to be in the public transport side to make sure we have the options that give, as we heard here, Deputy Tobin, Deputy Rourke and others, saying we have got critical public transport projects to get funding. Any underspend that we have this year is going to be used to invest in some of those rail and other solutions that would give us the capacity we need to also help the roads by taking some of the, you know, that two-hour traffic that it took Deputy Tobin to get in this morning. The solution to that is investing in public transport to help those who are on the roads, who have to be on the roads. Thank you. Thank you, Alaskan Court. Minister, again, a project that I discussed with you previously was the proposed east-west route. It is the route from Sligo to Dundalk via Fermanagh, Cavan, Monaghan. Parts of that road have been upgraded. It carries a huge volume of heavy traffic. It is a very important archery in the border region in the northern half of our country. And I sincerely hope that dedicated funding can be provided in 2023 to ensure the further planning, upgrading and the commencement of some works along that route is particularly important for towns like Cootill, Shercot, Carrick and Macross on to Dundalk and my own constituency. Thank you, Alaskan Court. I will continue to remember us having several conversations on that. I mean, the proposal or the prioritising roads, obviously, is something that TII have a central role in. It does all work in this entire capital budget. There is not too much negotiation when it comes with Minister McGrath on the capital side, because there the figures are set out in the National Development Plan and the approach to take investment priorities within that set out also in the National Development Plan. But we do have to take into account local specifics and areas, particularly where there is a lot of heavy haulage traffic and urban town villages, kind of getting that as true traffic is areas where we do have a specific problem, which I think is some of the characteristics of the route you mentioned there. Thank you. Thanks a lot.