Debate contribution: North Down Road Network: Investment
Debate contribution by Mr Stephen Dunne on .
- MLA
- Mr Stephen Dunne
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 1 April 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- North Down Road Network: Investment
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4877227
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I, too, thank my colleague Mr Peter Martin for securing an Adjournment debate on this topic, and I thank the Infrastructure Minister for her attendance this afternoon. The Department for Infrastructure has been operating a limited roads maintenance programme for 10 years. Its impact is really starting to show to a dangerous level right across Northern Ireland, but it has had a particular impact on our constituency of North Down.
During that time, we have seen our roads and footpaths in urban and rural areas deteriorate and the costs of claims for personal injury and damage to vehicles skyrocket. Simple routine maintenance tasks, such as cleaning road signs, regularly spraying weeds and cutting grass, have deteriorated across our area due to 10 years of significant underfunding and the prioritisation programme of limited service. While many of those issues are not unique to our area, as the Adjournment topic suggests, North Down does not get its fair share of investment for addressing such problems. I know that the Minister has been in the area relatively recently, so, hopefully, she saw then and will see in the future the condition of some of our roads.
Figures that I acquired recently when I asked a question for written answer brought that to bear and highlighted the starkness of the issue. It was confirmed that, in four of the past five financial years, our council area was ranked the lowest of all council areas in total resource and capital structural maintenance expenditure on road maintenance. That is simply not good enough. In 2022-23, the Ards and North Down Borough Council area had a road maintenance budget of £3 million. By comparison, the highest allocation was to the Mid Ulster District Council area, which received a staggering £21·5 million. The scale of the difference between those areas is certainly alarming. Meanwhile, in 2023 and for a number of years, our council area has topped the league table for the number of potholes reported. In that year alone, over 3,800 were reported. As has been mentioned, pothole repairs cause great frustration for us all and the people whom we represent. It is important that action be taken to ensure that, when repairs are carried out, they will last. I know that the issue extends across Northern Ireland, but the Minister will maybe take it on board. In North Down, utility companies have often come into areas just after resurfacing work has been done. That is an issue of huge frustration. The Department can do more to work with utility companies to ensure that they take responsibility and leave those areas in the same condition, if not in better condition, after they have dug them up. Hopefully, that can be prioritised. Hopefully, the new Minister has recognised that the "penny wise and pound foolish" approach that her Department sometimes takes to road maintenance benefits no one. As a member of the Infrastructure Committee, I look forward to seeing further details of the Minister's proposed new road maintenance strategy. I have spoken to her about that at the Committee. I hope that she will take the opportunity to address some of the issues and will commit to making interventions and higher-quality repairs where they are needed most. In recent years, we have seen the change to intervention levels. Where it was previously 20 millimetres on many of our roads, under the limited approach, they are left to reach 50 millimetres, which, I think that everybody will agree, is too high a threshold. That has been a factor in the ever-increasing number of claims for vehicle damage and personal injury, with more than a staggering £25 million paid out by the Department in the past five years. The A2 Bangor to Belfast dual carriageway is one of our country's busiest roads. However, it does not get the investment that it should. With around 45,000 vehicle movements daily, it has a number of issues. A lack of maintenance, signage and other dangerous issues have impacted road safety there and on the busy Bangor Ring Road. Look at grass verges, for example. Previously, they were cut more than five times per year: that has been reduced to twice per year. That has had an impact on sight lines at many of the junctions along those roads. The Minister's predecessor, Minister O'Dowd, introduced a policy of having 2-metre cuts. Again, that has had an adverse impact on road safety at sight lines. There are many issues. We hope that the Minister will get a grip on them and ensure that North Down gets its fair share of investment. There are other issues, including the routine maintenance of drainage systems and gullies, where we have seen flooding at some of those hotspots. We also look forward to more work being done on the wider road safety review of the A2, which has been committed to recently in responses to a number of questions. I pay tribute to the local section office staff, whom I know well and meet regularly. I appreciate their attention and that they work with limited resources and, sometimes, staff shortages. That is a wider issue in the Department that, I hope, the Minister is working on. In conclusion, it is worth highlighting the fact that, as representatives for North Down, we ask not for special treatment but for fairness and investment that is proportionate to the population and to the scale of the issues that we have seen. Hopefully, the current Minister will take the opportunity that the previous Minister did not to get a fair deal for the people of North Down.
934 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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