Debate contribution: Roads: Mid Ulster
Debate contribution by Mr Keith Buchanan on .
- MLA
- Mr Keith Buchanan
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 8 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- Roads: Mid Ulster
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5674669
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I appreciate that we have a full House here, so I will try to keep my remarks short. I appreciate the opportunity to raise the issue of road conditions in Mid Ulster. Broadly speaking, the debate could cover any area of Northern Ireland. I appreciate that the debate has been delayed from a few sessions before recess due to timings etc. When roads fall into disrepair, it is not merely infrastructure that suffers; it is the daily lives of families, carers and those in local business. Roads and rural roads are at the heart of rural communities, the safety of schoolchildren and the reliability of emergency services. Today, the state of our road network tells us a story of underinvestment, incorrect prioritisation and short-term fixes. It tells of communities left isolated, rural routes allowed to deteriorate and a system that patches problems instead of solving them. Minister, I appreciate that you have figures on the number of potholes fixed over the past few months. I think that 10,000 was the magic number in May or June. We talked about that number of potholes being fixed, which is positive, in that it keeps things moving. However, there is simply not enough money being spent on preventative works to roads. Pothole repairs are simply reactive maintenance and badly spent money. I know from my previous world of engineering maintenance that when you are playing a reactive game, you are losing. For too long, the Department's approach has resembled triage: a crisis-driven scramble to patch what is broken, rather than a thoughtful investment in what sustains us. We have treated potholes like symptoms, not signals. We have poured funds into surface fixes while structural integrity quietly erodes beneath our feet. Minister, I have a great working relationship with the staff on the ground, and I commend them. To be fair to them, they do an excellent job. They are a great bunch of people, and I get on very well with them. I deal with them almost weekly. However, please give them the tools to solve the issues. Part of my constituency is covered by the Mid-Ulster (North) and Mid-Ulster (South) section offices, and I see different approaches there. I see work being carried out on repairs at the right time of year and, in most cases, in a timely manner. I see roads with potholes that are marked with yellow circles for months and no repairs in some areas of Mid Ulster. When it comes to action, is there a different approach in Mid-Ulster (North) and Mid-Ulster (South), more broadly? Maybe you could cover that in your remarks, Minister. Minister, we are spending money on new footpaths. It will come as no surprise that I am not a fan of active travel. I have no issue with it broadly speaking, but I am not a fan of it when other bits of infrastructure are not being addressed. The existing footpaths are not maintained and, in some cases, are barely passable. We are building new but not maintaining old. I am told that there is no budget to repair the existing footpaths, but that is not an excuse. Minister, the pothole repairs that we see being carried out are just about standing still with demand. It is the beginning of September, and the weather is starting to change. Over winter last year, the roads deteriorated very badly, and that was with only wet weather and very little extreme cold. If serious investment is not put into the network this year and in future years, what we saw last winter will be good compared with what is to come. The roads are literally falling apart. There is one other point that I would like you to address in your comments, Minister, if you can. It is about reporting potholes online. If you report a pothole, the report disappears, but the pothole is not actually fixed. It may go on to a list or whatever, but the fact that it disappears means that you continuously get more reports for the same pothole. If people could log on and see that a pothole has been reported, they would not need to report it, rather than seeing that pothole coming off the list and not repaired. Over the past five years, the Department for Infrastructure has paid out nearly £33 million in public liability claims. That is not investment; it is compensation for damaged vehicles, personal injury and property damage and loss. It is the cost of neglect. We talk about the cost-of-living crisis, but how many people have had avoidable damage done to their vehicles, adding another cost to their lives, who simply cannot or have not claimed? Minister, I will talk about active travel. I have no issue with active travel, broadly. I listened to a debate, prior to recess, in which the term "prioritisation" was used. Minister, why did your Department build a footpath to Loughry college in Cookstown on the A29 at a cost of £430,000, which leaves Cookstown at the Dungannon Road, when there is already a footpath on the Tullywiggan Road going to the same location? Your Department built that, yet there are real active travel requirements, such as those at Upperlands, where people and schoolchildren walk to school daily on the road towards a blind bend. There is no resolution to that issue. Just 100 metres from that magic footpath, the Sandholes Road, which is the road leading to the main industrial area of Cookstown, is in a terrible state. Why are we building what is good to have but not getting the basics done? How many people install a new kitchen in their home when the roof needs to be replaced? That just does not make sense. One night, six vehicles were parked on that same road — the Sandholes stretch, although I could be talking about numerous roads across Mid Ulster — having been damaged by one pothole. By the way, that same pothole has come back and has been filled in twice since. It does not make sense. In the 2024-25 financial year alone, over £8 million was paid out. Of the 5,643 claims that were concluded, a staggering 4,615 were due to potholes. Those are not isolated incidents; they are representative of systemic failure. While the Department may settle claims, it cannot settle the frustration, the disruption or the danger that poor infrastructure brings to our daily lives. Let us not forget that rural roads make up over 60% of our network. They are often the most neglected roads, yet they are vital arteries for our isolated communities, farmers, carers and buses etc. As a party, we have always been clear that there must be regional balance when it comes to investment in our roads and surfaces. That principle must apply to any road maintenance strategy. It is vital that funding is allocated fairly across the Province, with a clear focus on those areas that are often left behind and particularly on rural roads. The regular maintenance of our roads matters to all road users. Road safety is a concern for us all. Ensuring that our roads and footpaths are well maintained and swiftly repaired must be a priority for the Minister. To be fair, I have recently seen work on the Castledawson roundabout and the Moneymore dual carriageway, both of which are A roads. The work on both of those is very welcome. That kind of work needs to continue and be rolled out across Mid Ulster in order to see road conditions improve more broadly. Minister, I will touch briefly on your 'Road Maintenance Strategy'. The strategy indicates whether A-class, B-class and C-class roads are in good, average or poor condition. I appreciate that C-class are less-used roads, but 4·39% of C-class roads are classified as being in poor condition. For B-class roads, it is 2·79%, and, for A-class roads, it is 2·3%. I appreciate that A-class roads are used by more vehicles, but that document indicates that C-class roads, which are the more rural roads, are left behind.
The same amount of money is not being spent on those roads.
Under the heading "Quality Maintenance" which comes after action 2, the document states:
"We will focus on delivering higher quality repairs instead of spreading resources too thinly".
That is quality over quantity, which is fair enough. Another point in the strategy concerns street works. I noticed this on social media not 10 minutes ago. Hillsborough is not in Mid Ulster, but, if you do not mind, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will bear into Hillsborough. A road there was fixed only weeks ago.
Thank you. My understanding is that that road was fixed only weeks ago. A utility company has since been in, a hole has been dug and it has now been patched with a poor repair. An excellent job had been done in Hillsborough — I am not promoting Hillsborough for one second — but a utility company has been in and dug it up and done a poor, shoddy repair, and that will cause damage. I highlight what has been done in Hillsborough because that has just come up on social media, but that happens across Northern Ireland, not only Mid Ulster. I am not blaming the utility workers, who have to do their job, but their repairs are, at times, not good enough. I appreciate that the document refers to the quality of maintenance. As I mentioned, I have an excellent working relationship with your engineers on-site, Minister. It is good to get them out on-site: do not stop that. It is important, when they go out on-site, to be able to have a debate and agree on what will or will not be done. Do not take that away, Minister. They are all trying to do a job, but they need the tools. Minister, I could go on. This is a genuine conversation to address what people see daily. It is not an attack on you but an attack on where you spend the money. Do not build new footpaths if we cannot maintain the old ones. I could go to Tobermore and literally not be able to walk down the footpaths. That does not make sense. There is no money, but it would not take a fortune to maintain those footpaths. The verge is overgrown, so people cannot walk on them. I could probably pick out an area in every part of Northern Ireland that is like that. Why are we building new footpaths when we cannot maintain what we have? It does not make sense. I will appreciate your response, Minister, and I hope that other Members appreciate that this is a genuine conversation. I want to see the roads in Mid Ulster maintained and not only the rural roads. For the number of heavy vehicles that come into Mid Ulster for industry the road network is not maintained well enough and the money is not spent cleverly enough. Minister, I appreciate your presence here today.
1,844 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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