Debate contribution: Roads: Mid Ulster

Debate contribution by Ms Liz Kimmins on 8 September 2026.

MLA

Ms Liz Kimmins

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

8 September 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Roads: Mid Ulster

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5674701

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank Keith Buchanan for securing this important debate and for the tone and manner in which the issues have been raised. I appreciate that we are all acutely aware of the challenges. As I have said many times in the Chamber, this is not unique to any MLA's constituency but goes right across the board. I welcome the fact that every Member who spoke in the debate acknowledged the need for proper investment, because that is key to a lot of the issues that have been raised. Our road network is a £37 billion public asset. It is relied on every day by families, businesses and emergency services. As we all know, when the network deteriorates, that is felt by everyone who travels on it. Due to the significant budget cuts that Westminster has been making for over a decade, we have not been able to fund roads maintenance to the level that is required to sustain it. Since 2015, the Department has been operating a limited service, dealing with the most critical defects while deferring the maintenance that prevents those risks from emerging in the first place. We will take forward the examples that you gave, Deborah. I do not know why those issues have not been addressed or brought to my attention, as you will appreciate, but it is important that serious defects such as those are prioritised, so we will certainly take that forward. This is not a stable position for us to be in, as we know. It is the managed decline of the network, and we are now seeing the consequences of that in very real terms: a £2 billion backlog, roads deteriorating faster than the Department can repair them, and an increase in failures such as flooding and landslips. That creates more unpredictable conditions for the public while also pushing up the longer-term costs, claims and disruption. As Members will agree, if we continue on that path, there will be more reactive repairs, reduced resilience and growing pressure on public finances. The impacts are not contained in my Department; they are felt in Health, in the economy and in communities across the North. They cannot be addressed by my Department alone. Protecting the road network and the people who rely on it requires collective Executive ownership. It requires a shared recognition that stable, sustained investment is essential to moving from a position that is reactive to a failing road network to one that is preventative. Recently, I was pleased to secure Executive agreement that investment in critical infrastructure such as roads and waste water should be prioritised. I delivered that message loud and clear to the British Secretary of State when the Executive met him yesterday. The Executive are united on our need for a fair funding settlement in order to effectively recover and deliver better public services, including roads maintenance and our roads infrastructure. However, even within the constrained envelope that is currently available to me, I have made sure to front-load investment in our roads this year, ensuring that a stable maintenance programme can take place ahead of the winter period, which, as we all know, speeds up the deterioration of our roads. We saw the significant effects of that last year and at the start of this year. For me, it is about being more proactive and knowing what can happen, and I hope to continue to build on that investment when we have an agreed Budget. In the past financial year, using the finite resources available in my Department, I made additional short-term investments in excess of £40 million that were designed to address the most safety-critical concerns across the network. The additional funding allowed the Department to deliver a more enhanced package of structural maintenance work than was previously envisioned. This was predominantly made up of large-scale patching, extending existing resurfacing work and bringing forward work that would otherwise not have been completed in the 2025-26 financial year. Some of that work will have addressed existing recorded potholes — Mr Buchanan referred to some of the numbers that we quoted at the time — and some of it will have been to repair potholes that had not yet met the criteria but would undoubtedly have required action in the coming months. In the Mid Ulster constituency, the additional allocation enabled resurfacing works that included Stangmore roundabout and Carnteel Road in Dungannon; the Pomeroy Road near Donaghmore; the Hillhead Road at Castledawson; and the Drumgrass Road near Cookstown. During the 2025-26 financial year, my Department spent £5·6 million on structural maintenance resurfacing, £935,000 on road recovery resurfacing on minor roads; £642,000 on drainage improvement works; and £2·38 million on carriageway patching across the mid-Ulster district.

Other works included just over half a million on grass cutting and weed control, £235,000 on road-marking renewal and £1·1 million on drainage system maintenance and footway clearing. My Department has recently completed £1·4 million of surface-dressing works across Mid Ulster to preserve the life of the existing road network. Since the start of the current financial year, in the north of the district, approximately £1 million has been spent on resurfacing works at the A6 Castledawson roundabout and the A6 Glenshane Road at Coolnasillagh, Curran and the Knockloughrim link road. In the south of the district, resurfacing works are ongoing at Aghafad Road and Fintona Road, Clogher. A substantial resurfacing scheme is planned for the A4 Annaghilla Road between Ballygawley and Augher. I have also allocated £1·67 million of road recovery funding to the district, and works are ongoing in both local section areas to rejuvenate the minor road network. I was pleased to take forward numerous road safety schemes in Mid Ulster. Mr Buchanan may have referred to some of those in his criticism, but four additional schools in Mid Ulster have benefited from the part-time 20 mph school zones, the completion of the £1·9 million Creenagh Bridge replacement, which included carriageway realignment and footway works, and the recently completed Dungannon Road active travel scheme, which will link existing active travel infrastructure in Cookstown to CAFRE's Loughry campus, the Mid Ulster Sports Arena, local businesses, residential properties and amenities in the area. As an elected representative, I appreciate the concerns and issues that Mr Buchanan raised, but he will know that, through legislation, I have a duty to invest in active travel, and a certain percentage of the budget has to be directed towards it. We are continuing to work towards that target, but we have not met it. Schemes such as that enable communities to be more connected. It is also about not just providing links for existing usage but encouraging more people not to get into private cars and to use alternative methods.

I will indeed.

We look at that within the existing budget. It is not just about new, shiny schemes. I want to really emphasise that point. I, too, have had that discussion with my officials. We need to ensure that what is already there is in a useable condition. That includes things such as ensuring that footpaths are well lit. Street lighting and such things all contribute to ensuring that people will go out and use those different methods: walking, cycling etc. We all use our roads, and even the smallest repair, as many have said here this evening, and as I have heard many times in the Chamber, can have a big impact when it comes to better journeys for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. I am pleased that the repairs that we have been able to make are providing a real and tangible difference. However, I am not complacent. I understand that there is still much more to do, because the overall condition of the network has suffered from years of underfunding long before I was in post. To underpin that short-term work with longer-term resilience in the network, as Members have mentioned, the new road maintenance strategy, which was published on 27 July this year, aims to introduce a data-driven approach to maintaining the road network, ensuring that resources are used more effectively and efficiently. Let me be very clear — I have said this at every juncture in the development of the strategy — I did not want the strategy to be done for the sake of it and sit on a shelf. We are starting to see the implementation of what has been set out in the strategy. This is very important, and I want it to be prioritised. I want it to be straightforward and clear so that people can understand what we are doing, why we are doing it and what impacts they will see in the time ahead. It is really about looking under the bonnet of every aspect of road maintenance and improving our approach to how we do things.

Yes.

I am not even halfway through. This is a good opportunity for me to outline where the strategy comes in. There is a lot of talk about what the digital survey will actually do. It will reduce the need for inspectors to go out as often and the reliance on manual surveying. We do not have enough staff to do all those things. We will do the digital survey annually, which is more than we have been able to do previously. The digital survey will pick up at an earlier stage the interventions that we need to make and identify them. Keith outlined some of the percentage figures for rural roads, and we will now have a full picture of the condition of our roads from the first full, complete digital survey. That covers some 26,000 kilometres of road — someone may correct me on that, but it is in and around that for the whole of the North — and that is huge. It took months to undertake the survey, but we will do that annually to ensure that we continually pick up on the issues. It is important to raise the point about the annual survey because utilities reopening the roads has been mentioned, and the survey will help us to pick up on any issues. As it stands, the resources available for inspecting utility reinstatement means that only a small percentage of works are inspected. We simply do not have enough staff, and a sample percentage of inspections is carried out. We will now be able to see the reinstatements on a more regular basis. We are looking at the warranty periods and how we ensure that the work is done to the correct standard. I appreciate that a lot of it will take time to bed in, but I hope that Members hear, loud and clear, that we are taking it very seriously. We are looking at how we can do things better, albeit with limited resources, but it is not all just about money; it is about taking a different approach to road maintenance. One of the key issues in the strategy is about how we do more reactive maintenance. We should not fill one pothole when there are four or five more beside it. In some of the recent repairs to roads, there has been larger-scale patching to cover a bigger section of the road that may not require a full resurfacing or where there are other priorities before that road will be done. That will help to build in resilience, and it will reduce the number of times that we go out to the same location. The strategy was launched at the end of July, and we are only at the start of September. I hope that people will see the difference over the coming weeks and months. We know how important our road network is for all the reasons that have been outlined. I will not go into much more detail on the strategy, but I hope that what I have said gives a flavour of the very practical things that we are doing as a result of the strategy. Earlier, I mentioned that I have front-loaded my investment in roads within the existing budget that we are operating from while we are in negotiation, which is a significant increase in my opening budget for roads last year, because it is important to get ahead of the road maintenance issue. It means that we have prioritised roads over other issues, but there are ongoing negotiations with the Secretary of State about funding. He knows, in no uncertain terms, what we need to deliver here. We recognise the condition of our rural roads, and I have doubled the road recovery fund this year to get ahead of the maintenance issue.

OK. I think that I got through half of it.

2,119 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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