Debate contribution: North Down Road Network: Investment
Debate contribution by Mr Alan Chambers on .
- MLA
- Mr Alan Chambers
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 1 April 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- North Down Road Network: Investment
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4877240
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Funnily, all the comments made in 2016 are probably as applicable today as they were then. I spoke for 10 minutes in that debate, and I was tempted just to use the speech that I made all those years ago. However, I have a sore throat today, so, Members will be pleased to know, I will not speak for 10 minutes or even seven minutes. I understand the demands on the Minister to deliver more with an ever-shrinking budget. Real world budget realities kick in; I see that in the health service. People ask for more and more, but the budget is not there. That is the reality that we are dealing with. I am sure that the Minister will expand on that. None of the problems that we are talking about are unique to North Down. I drive around the Province a lot, and I see potholes everywhere and grass not getting cut around the countryside. That is not unique to North Down. In the 2023-34 financial year, the Department spent £410,000 on the Groomsport roundabout project. That project was definitely not needed, but it was coming to the end of the financial year, and the Department obviously did not want to hand back budget, so the money was spent. That money could have been spent better on some more pressing issues. We are obsessed with potholes — rightly so, because they are everywhere you go. If you report a cluster of them, officials from the Department come out and put markings around it for repair. There may be four or five potholes in that cluster, but there will be one for which they will not put down a marking and that they will not repair because it is maybe a millimetre outside the criteria that it needs to meet in order to be fixed. It seems like a waste of resources to come out to fix three, four or five potholes but leave one. They will have to come back to fix it a fortnight later, because that one millimetre will have gone. That needs to be looked at. I have also noticed that there is a band-aid approach to fixing potholes. Back in the day, a mechanical roller was used, and you could see the steam coming off the tar. Now, a guy with a wheelbarrow and a shovel throws a lot of stuff into the pothole and beats it down with a shovel. A fortnight or three weeks later, it is back to square one. The Department may need to have a look at that. The other thing that I have asked questions about and about which I have a bee in my bonnet is road signage that gets damaged in vehicle collisions. A number of years ago, I asked the Department whether it tried to recover the costs of repairing those signs from the car owners' insurance but the answer was no, because it was too much bother and was not cost-effective. The same thing happened after the recent storms. A lot of trees on private property fell down on to public roads, and the Department had to clear them away. I asked the Department whether it tried to recover its costs from householders' insurance or public liability insurance, but, again, the answer was no, because it was too much hassle and was not cost-effective. There is a lot of money there that could fill a lot of potholes, if the Department had the motivation to go after it. Another suggestion that I have made over recent years is that there should be more consultation with elected representatives when the Department or the section office is drawing up the programme for the year ahead. It should consult us, because we know which footpaths and roads need to be fixed. Somebody in an office 30 or 40 miles away from Bangor or North Down does not know the area. They are making choices that are maybe not the best choices. A little more pre-consultation would be better than coming to the council to tell it what they are going to do. They should come along and ask what it is that we want them to do. Peter listed a lot of streets in Bangor that are really bad. In his speech that night in 2016, Alex Easton named just about every street in North Down as needing attention. I dare say that some of the streets that Peter highlighted were mentioned back in 2016, so nothing much has changed in the meantime. North Down, however, is also being let down by the Department when it comes to central road markings, which have really fallen into disrepair. We had a conversation recently about the glare from LED headlights. When you are the victim of that, when a car is coming at you with those strong LED headlights, you can lose your sense of position on the road. The only thing that salvages the situation is the central road markings, if they are working and if they are reflective. That, at least, gives you something with which to position yourself on the road. The road markings are very poor, and I have reported some in Groomsport. The Minister has replied that they will be fixed in the summer, but that means that the road will be without road markings for another three months. We need to up our game there. The other thing is that gully cleaning is resulting in a lot of surface water, which needs to be addressed as well. We need to take a more robust approach to that matter. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I managed seven minutes.
944 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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