Debate contribution: A20 Portaferry Road, Newtownards: Road Safety Improvements

Debate contribution by Ms Kellie Armstrong on 12 March 2024.

MLA

Ms Kellie Armstrong

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

12 March 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

A20 Portaferry Road, Newtownards: Road Safety Improvements

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4267240

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank Michelle McIlveen MLA, a fellow Strangford representative, for securing the Adjournment debate. Minister, I am a bus woman. As you may know — some of your Department definitely know — I worked in infrastructure for 16 years before I came to the House. Apart from a Euro 6 engine, a road surface is the thing that really gets my geek on: I can tell you about road surfaces that will keep the noise down. I agree completely with Michelle McIlveen: the Portaferry road — the A20 — is a dangerous road. It snakes around Strangford lough and, as it does, is not very forgiving. If a driver makes a mistake, boy do they make a mistake. They will end up either in the lough or up against one of the walls. Mount Stewart and Grey Abbey House are two of the places that have significant lengths of wall along them. A road does not kill anyone. It can sit all day: if nobody is on it, nobody will get hurt. However, as soon as you have drivers on it and the conditions that we have on the A20, all of a sudden you get a dangerous situation. I agree with some of the things that Michelle asserted need to be done. There are certain things, Minister, I ask you to consider. We have only three minutes in these debates, so I will not take too long.

Thank you, Principal Deputy Speaker. I may take you at your word on that. I have to say, Minister, that, if you drive the whole way along that road — the local vernacular may confuse you, but your officials should be able to keep you right — you will see that there is not a part of the straight on Grey Abbey that has not been cut up by a utility company and put back quite badly. The straight from Grey Abbey to Kircubbin is awful. I am probably the one person in the House who is on it twice or three times a day. It pulls you so hard into the centre of the road that it is hard to keep a car on track because of the utility cuts on it.

There are potholes that have been filled and refilled time and again. There is a lack of lights at junctions. I have asked the Department about that before. I appreciate that, as Michelle said, we can really keep up with the policy, but we are talking here about road safety. I have asked the Department whether there is any possibility that we could light up some of the junctions of the 60 mph section of the A20. I wish that everybody on the A20 did 60 mph, but I have to say that quite a few do a lot more than that. Lights would be an improvement. As Michelle mentioned, moving the speed limit further beyond Teal Rocks would certainly help that part of the A20. I would love to know why there cannot be crash barriers at key points when we know that there have been umpteen dozen crashes at them. There have been crashes involving buses going off the road or, sadly, domiciliary care workers in the early hours of the morning. At Mount Stewart, a stonemason had to be employed to replace the stones in part of a wall because it is hit that often. We could do with some road safety signs on the road. I hope that those would not cost too much money, but reflective signs on some of the worst corners would not go amiss. I would also support any action that you, Minister, could take against private landowners who have allowed trees or plants to grow out over our footpaths. We could then take back those footpaths. The legal size of a footpath does not exist along part of the A20. Michelle McIlveen talked about Teal Rocks. Parts of that footpath, as you come up to it from Newtownards and just beyond as you head out towards Portaferry, are down to no more than a 12-inch rule. It is tiny. It is not fit for purpose. I sit on the Ards peninsula coastal erosion group. We have banged on about coastal erosion for a long time. Minister, a hard decision may have to be taken on this in the future: do we keep the A20, or do we move it? Moving it would be very expensive. We need to look at our measures in conjunction with the local community and Mount Stewart, who talk about managing coastal retreat and the coastal work. I would very much appreciate hearing anything that you have to say about coastal erosion and how we can handle it. I very much thank your team. Any time that I have contacted the local division, staff have been extraordinarily quick to come out and help, so fair play to them. As with the rest of your Department, Minister, I am sure that a few more pounds would help us, the A20 and your teams.

846 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:50 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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