Debate contribution: Road Maintenance Strategy

Debate contribution by Mr Peter Martin on 15 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Peter Martin

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

15 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Road Maintenance Strategy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5100274

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I was not really planning to speak this evening, but I will pick up on a few points that other Members have made. First, I pay tribute to Mr Boylan, who managed to squeeze a call for a united Ireland into a roads debate. That takes some doing, but well done nonetheless. Mr McNulty started, I think, by attacking us for tabling the motion. He is nodding at me, so I will take that as a fair summary. I do not want to put words in his mouth. I simply say to him that I think that that is our job.

It is a legislative Chamber. We do not have that Ministry, so we have to hold the Minister to account. I will further point out to him that, in my constituency of North Down, this is probably the most talked about issue. Everyone has a view on our roads. The Member for Lagan Valley reflected that, and I might come back to it in a minute. It is right that we are having the debate, and I pay tribute to my colleagues who tabled the motion. I have a few comments to make and a few questions for the Minister. I will start with the really easy ones. Andrew McMurray mentioned Martyn Boyd from MAG-UK and referenced the fact that his colleague is not here. Martyn is a campaigner for better road safety, and, to be fair to the Minister, she recently met Martyn and me. We had a constructive meeting, and she will take on board some of the issues that came from that meeting, which is right and proper. Some figures that were quoted included £33 million in public liability claims over the past five years. That was a figure that I certainly heard. I imagine that much of that money covered damage from potholes and some was for damage from slips, trips and falls. I want to pick up on the point that the Member for Lagan Valley made. I have serious concerns about the state of some of our pavements in North Down. Over the summer, I was canvassing in a quiet residential area, and, as I knocked on doors, I realised that most of the people were elderly. The state of the pavements was appalling, and people were saying to me, "Peter, can you not do something about this? There are two people in wheelchairs, and somebody else is on a rollator". The Member mentioned that. Those people said, "This is a real issue. It is actually dangerous for us to go out of our house". I thank the Minister for agreeing to send some DFI officials down to meet me. We will pick up on some of those issues at some point in the near future.

I will indeed.

I thank the Member for Lagan Valley for that intervention. I agree completely. It is a real issue. I do not think that the Minister has a magic wand. If she does, she could get it out, which would be great, but I do not think that she has one. That brings me on to my next point, which is a question for the Minister. We have a finite budget, and the Member on the other side who spoke previously mentioned the fact that a lot of the issue has to do with the finite budget and the British Government not giving us enough money. However, I will point out that the baseline has been lifted — it used to be £1·2 billion and is now £1·24 billion — so there is more money than has recently been apportioned. However, the question to the Minister is this: given that there is a finite budget and that I do not believe that she has a magic wand, where does she envisage the efficiency savings and what can she do with them? That is absolutely key, unless more money is coming. It is about what you can do more efficiently and effectively in the Department with a finite pot of money to make it go further. I will pick up on the famous yellow squares or circles around our potholes. Sometimes, I have witnessed three potholes, one of which has a yellow circle around it, while two do not. The one with the yellow circle is filled, but the other two, which were all of one and a half feet away, is not. I do not really get that. There may be a reason for it, but I do not see it. Part of the issue is the economy of scale that you would get from filling the three potholes, not just the one with the yellow marking around it. Again, that is probably a question that, I am sure, the Minister will pick up on. Some Members have reflected on this, but I can also say that I have an excellent relationship with the officials in our North Down section office. They work really hard. We are all MLAs, and the Minister is an MLA who has the same issues as we have and are talking about in the Chamber. That is not the issue: the issue is how we can do things a little better and more efficiently. Clearly, I have several issues from a local North Down perspective, and I will continue to raise those.

They relate to a pattern. How do we do things better? How do we make the money go further? What can we do differently that will increase the output for, more or less, the same input?

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:10 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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