Debate contribution: Road Maintenance Strategy

Debate contribution by Mr Keith Buchanan on 15 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Keith Buchanan

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 5100330

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I do not intend to take all that time. I will briefly run through some of the comments that Members have made, and put in my own bits and pieces during that. First, Stephen touched on road safety's being compromised by different issues, such as potholes etc. He talked about road freight's being transported on Northern Ireland roads, and said that, over the past five years, £32 million has been paid out due to damaged roads. He also talked about active travel. I have a bit of a bugbear with active travel, although not with the concept of it. Over the weekend, I went through Coleraine. There is a great active travel scheme in Coleraine, but its active travel footpaths are wider and in better shape than most of the roads in rural Tyrone. It is fine to have that, but active travel needs to be balanced — we touched on that earlier during Question Time with the Minister — between new footpaths and cycleways and maintaining what we have. That is a bugbear of mine because in Tobermore, Desertmartin, Moneymore and Cookstown — we can all name such areas — you cannot actually walk on the rural footpaths. Then, you go through Coleraine and there is a highway beside the road. I am not suggesting that anybody drives on the footpath, but there is a contradiction. It is like building a new extension to your house when you are not using the rooms that you have. That just does not make sense. My colleague to the left is a big advocate of active travel. That is fine, but he needs to take a wee run over to rural Tyrone on his bicycle some time when he is free and see what we are dealing with. The issue was covered well. Active travel is something that we can look at, going forward, to see how we can maintain what we have and get the correct balance. Cathal Boylan referred to the constituency casework workload. He referred to recent schemes in his area. I must take a run down there, Cathal, to see how good they are and to get a bit of experience of a quality road. Andrew McMurray touched on road conditions in his area and referred to cycling and motorcycling organisations with which his colleague had liaised.

Robbie Butler talked about the decline of our pavements and paths. There is no doubt that that applies across NI; it is a broad theme. Any points that colleagues covered could broadly be made about anywhere. He talked about Lagan Valley road conditions and — Peter talked about this as well — instead of marking potholes, filling them as you as go. I think that you talked about getting your own bucket, Robbie, and starting to fill potholes and the risks associated with that. You are welcome on the Committee, Justin McNulty, but I thought that you would have done a wee bit of research. Roads are not my portfolio — they are in Sinn Féin's portfolio — but I will give you a bye ball because you have just joined the Committee. You are certainly not a motivator of DFI Roads staff. With your comments, I would not get you to do any campaigns for them. For clarity, roads are not the DUP's portfolio but Sinn Fein's, and the sky is certainly blue. Nicola Brogan commented on road conditions west of the Bann. She is a bit like me with the issues that she has there. She referred to making sure that rural roads are not forgotten, which is a valid point. A lot of money goes on the main roads that carry the most people but not on the rural roads, and the Minister is from that sort of area. Peter Martin talked about slips, trips and falls because of pavement conditions. He talked about efficiencies. My colleague Trevor Clarke talked about efficiencies on the road. I see that daily when a utility company does a repair that is not of the standard that it should be. That is no reflection on engineers in the area, to be fair to them. They can maintain and inspect only so much, but there has to be some way of holding to account those utility companies that come to a road that is perfectly good job and track it but do not do it well enough, so that is where it cracks. That has to be looked at. Again, Peter Martin talked about how potholes are marked instead of being fixed at the time. Áine Murphy talked about her office being inundated with people talking about road issues. No doubt it is; I hear about a lot of road issues too. She talked about a preventative rather than a reactive road safety strategy. Gerry Carroll talked about the number of issues that have been reported to his office. I missed the number, Gerry. It was in the hundreds, I think you said. Maybe you should not answer me.

Then there was the number of potholes in the area. You talked about there being one per house and about damage to cars. We could all write those points, but they are all valid. Unfortunately, you have missed your bus. I can never get a bus home from here. I do not know when I would get home; it might be Thursday.

We will have to leave it there. Maybe that is something that the Minister can —.

Go ahead.

You are misinterpreting my age, Gerry. I am not old enough to remember that. I cannot recall the noise of the steam trains in Mid Ulster, to be honest. I know that they were there, but that was some time back. Members have broadly covered a lot of similar points. They are the same: rural roads need money, and there is a need to look at active travel. I am not a fan of that, but I want the Minister to look at an active travel scheme that got the green light in Mid Ulster. I do not want to get parochial, but I am. They are building a footpath to nowhere — out to Loughry campus. The only reason why that got over the line was that there was, unfortunately, a fatality on the other footpath. I know that there is never a reason, but there was a reason why that happened. We are getting that footpath to Loughry campus, which, technically, goes nowhere, but we cannot get one to go to Dunman Creamery, where dozens of workers walk out every day on the hard shoulder. I do not have a problem with active travel; it is about how it is scored. There is one footpath going ahead to Loughry campus when there is a perfectly good footpath on the other route, which is actually shorter, yet they are building a new one out one way when we cannot get one going to Dunman, where all the workers walk out of the factory. There is an issue with how that is done. It is done that way because it is quick and easy: there is no land to vest; and you can spend big money quickly. You can ask anybody walking in Cookstown today whether we need a footpath to Loughry campus or Dunman Creamery, and I know what they will tell you. It is about how we get that scoring right. There is something wrong there. I have pushed and pushed, but there is an issue there. It is a box-ticking exercise to spend active travel money quickly so that people can say, "We've spent this amount of money", but it is not spent on the cleverest projects. You can ask the people locally which are the ones to do. I know that everybody has their parochial issues, but, broadly speaking, there is an issue there. It is a box-ticker in order to spend money quickly. It has been a good debate. We have covered a lot of things, and there is no point in me rehearsing them all. We talked about the amount of money that is being spent on potholes. Unless we invest, that will not be reduced. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I appreciate your time.

1,382 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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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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