Debate contribution: Roads: Mid Ulster
Debate contribution by Mr Justin McNulty on .
- MLA
- Mr Justin McNulty
- Party at the time
- Social Democratic and Labour Party
- Date
- 8 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- Roads: Mid Ulster
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5674687
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Adjournment topic, and I thank Mr Buchanan for bringing this important debate to the Assembly this evening. It is an issue that he has particular interest in, as does my SDLP party colleague from Mid Ulster, Patsy McGlone, who has been a steady champion for Mid Ulster for a generation. Mr McGlone recalls that road infrastructure in Mid Ulster was the subject of Mr Buchanan's maiden speech to the Assembly almost 10 years ago. He is still banging the drum. Yes, we are all getting older and, hopefully, a little wiser. At the time of Mr Buchanan's maiden speech, the Magherafelt bypass was nearing completion. It has since proven to be a great success, providing the town's residents with welcome relief from the heavy traffic logjam. Patsy McGlone, as chair of the Assembly all-party group on the built environment, as well as a representative for the people of Mid Ulster, welcomes such projects, the jobs that they bring and the economic boost and support for economic development that they provide. However, as predicted, the downstream impact is that traffic now moves more quickly to Moneymore and creates a bottleneck in that small town, and, 10 years later, a little further on, Cookstown is still waiting for the long-promised bypass. Patsy McGlone has an office in Cookstown and, obviously, is there frequently. He talks about how the traffic continues to use the Westland Road as an unofficial bypass around the town and how it remains chock-a-block at most times of the day. His hope and the hope of everyone from Cookstown is that it will not be another 10 years before there is substantial progress on that project or a solution provided in Moneymore. The reality is that the Executive prioritise high-profile schemes like the A5 and the A6 — they are regionally and nationally significant roads that merit progress — but, as the courts have ruled, the Executive are even prepared to break the law in order to see progress made on those schemes and thereby stymie progress on all major road projects. Worthy as those schemes are, their progress or lack of progress represents choices made by successive Ministers, their Department and the Executive. Choices have also been made when it comes to our rural roads network. There are around 25,000 kilometres of roads in the North, more than 18,000 kilometres of which are rural roads, but the rural roads network in Mid Ulster has been starved of investment for a long time. We all know about the buckled rims, the ruined tyres and the danger that is caused by swerves to avoid the serious potholes on our rural roads. That is the result of a serious lack of maintenance of the North's roads, not just rural roads but those in our cities, towns and suburbs. Maintenance of the roads network in a rural constituency like Mid Ulster is vital to rural communities and the rural economy. The Minister's new roads maintenance strategy, which was published in July, aims to use technology to better target available resources and raise the standard of maintenance across the network and use environmentally sustainable materials. That seems contrary to the assertion of the chief executive of the Mineral Products Association (MPA) — the industry body for road construction — that the A5 dual carriageway could have been the first carbon-neutral carriageway on these islands had proper processes been followed. Without adequate investment to begin with, we will continue to see the further deterioration of our roads network. It is not enough to allocate additional funding for road maintenance when or if those funds become available throughout the year, as the Minister has done previously. As the SDLP has long argued, to be truly sustainable and effective, a properly resourced road repair and maintenance strategy needs to be an integral part of the Infrastructure budget. That requires a different approach by the Minister. It requires support from her Executive colleagues, including Ministers from her party. It requires the Executive collectively to make difficult choices and stop making excuses — just stop it. When Ministers are criticised for making political choices, it is not sustainable for those Ministers to complain of cuts to their budgets or the block grant. It is the responsibility of the Executive to make the case to the British Treasury for sufficient funding, and it is the responsibility of individual Ministers to make the case to the Executive and to their party colleagues for sufficient funds for their Departments. It is then the responsibility of the Minister to choose how to allocate those funds. Of course, an Executive that could agree a multi-year Budget or, at this point, even a single-year Budget would put the Minister in a much better place to choose to resource a properly funded maintenance —
— strategy for our rural roads.
813 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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