Debate contribution: Roadworks: South Down

Debate contribution by Mr Colin McGrath on 3 December 2024.

MLA

Mr Colin McGrath

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

3 December 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Roadworks: South Down

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4691456

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank my constituency colleague for securing this important Adjournment debate. I reflect that, as a party health spokesperson, after about six or seven weeks of Adjournment debates on health matters, I spoke to the Whips and implored them to move on to different subjects. We have now had about five weeks of South Down issues. It seems that we are compelled to be the latest Members in attendance on Tuesdays. There are so many different layers to the issue. There is no point in laying punches into the Minister. He has inherited the Department and an absolutely deplorable road network. Two different examples came to my mind. The first was that I remember joining the local town twinning committee about 10 years ago on a visit to Moldova. We arrived in the capital city, which is quite far up in the north, and we were to attend a city that was about a three-hour drive to the south. It was the worst drive of my life. There were literally massive craters in the road. The minibus that we were in was weaving its way down to that city. It took an age to get there, and you felt that your stomach was in your mouth for that journey. That experience is what comes to mind on some of the roads in South Down and across other parts of the North. You really find yourself paying serious attention to the sides of the road when you are driving to try to work out when you will have to pull over onto the other side of the road to navigate around potholes and sometimes even little surface defects that mean that your car will bump its way along. That is not necessarily comfortable for you or your passengers. Of course, you are also worrying about the fact that cars are coming on the other side of the road and about not straying into their path. On some of the country roads in rural constituencies, at times you really have to take your time, and you really sweat when driving along some of the roads because of the danger. Add to the mix a heavy rainfall, and you do not know whether something is a puddle or a pothole. If you drive over it, will it be grand, or will you bump right down into it? From our constituency office work, we all know the number of complaints that we get about roads. None yet has topped the complaint that I got as a councillor about 15 years ago, when a person sent me the bill and asked me to pay it for them because of the state of the road. Thankfully, I was able to direct them to the online system to claim the money back. It seems counterproductive that we direct people to receive compensation, which runs to millions and millions of pounds, yet we cannot use that money up front to fix the roads. The second thing that I remember is that, when I was a child, for a time, we had to travel regularly to visit sick family in Dublin. Every Sunday, the whole family used to be packed into the car, and off we went to Dublin in the morning. We visited the family and then travelled back up again. We used to laugh in the car, because we knew exactly where the border was because, as we travelled north, the road surface suddenly became much better. It was smooth. It was a much better road. The roads in the South were always much worse, but how times have changed. That has completely turned around. The roads in the South are far above the quality of the roads that we have in the North. That makes life difficult. Other Members have rehearsed individual examples. In the area around Mourne, especially on the road from Newcastle to Kilkeel, the road surface is horrendous. I know that drivers are supposed to keep an eye on the road — that is important and is always the priority — but you have beautiful scenery around you and, for lots of visitors, the worst bit about the poor roads is that you never get a chance to take the scenery in, even as a passenger, because the car is bouncing around, people are grabbing whatever there is in the car to hold on to, and the journey is much more difficult. I echo the remarks that were made about the Audit Office report. Roadworks that are done by utility services are an absolute bugbear. My town of Downpatrick is the greatest example. When you drive into Downpatrick from Belfast, you sometimes feel your car suddenly start to move towards the side of the road, and you realise that your tyres are in the tracks made by the utility company that resurfaced the road. The road surface has dropped down and created a bit of a recess, like a groove, where the work was done. That should not happen. I question the Department's checking system and ask the Minister to use his full influence to make sure that a robust system is put in place for every road that is ripped up by a company, because, around Downpatrick, there are numerous examples of roads that have been dug up and put back down by utility companies. Some great work has been done. I know that a period has to pass before utility companies can come to dig up a road, but it sometimes feels as if they wait and wait and, the first day after the deadline, come straight out with their diggers to dig up the road. A piece of resurfacing was done between Crossgar and Downpatrick during my time in the Assembly. It was done only about six or seven years ago, but the road has already been dug up in various places. That just ruins the road. I will touch on a final issue, which is a bit of a pet hate. It is about something that has slipped into the Department's email response to queries; I am not sure whether other Members have noticed it. Although drivers absolutely have to be careful and take account of what is around them, every time that you ask about an issue with a road, ask for it to be upgraded or point to some surface defect, you get the response, "It is the responsibility of the driver to drive appropriately for the surface of the road". Of course it is, but if we had nice surfaces and nice roads, it might be easier and more pleasant to do so. South Down is probably no different from any other constituency in the state of the roads. If it is, there are more grounds for them to be fixed as quickly as possible. This has been a good debate on a really important issue. It impacts on more or less everybody in the area, because we are all in a car or a vehicle at some stage. I hope that the Minister will do all that he can to address the roads in South Down.

1,191 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:43 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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